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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

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BOOK: Rust On the Razor
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I ambled to the car. The lights in the parking lot flicked off as I approached our rental. I saw a dark figure in the backseat of the car. “Now what?” I muttered.
As I approached, the bulk didn't move. A few seconds later I was close enough to recognize, despite the deep shadows, the grinning face of Peter Woodall, the sheriff. I unlocked the front door and flipped the lock for all the doors. An unpleasant odor mixed with the new-car smell. I guessed it had something to do with the nearby forests, swamps, and farms. Odd I hadn't noticed it when I walked
out of the hospital. Maybe the wind had changed.
By the time I wrenched open the back door, I'd completely lost my temper. “I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, you son of a bitch. I've never done anything to you. I just want to be left alone. As soon as Scott's father is better, we're leaving. I wouldn't want to stay in your goddamn county anyway.”
Woodall just kept staring forward and grinning.
“Look, asshole,” I continued, “maybe you've got some score to settle with Scott. Maybe you should fight a duel or do whatever it is macho guys do in the South, but why don't you leave us the hell alone until that can be arranged?”
He grinned some more.
I leaned further in. Most of his body was shrouded in darkness. The odd smell was almost overwhelming. “Look, shit-for-brains, maybe you can hide in the backseat of people's cars in this part of the country, but—”
The grinning face slowly leaned toward me and then continued past my startled expression and slumped all the way over.
I grabbed the body before it could fall out of the car. It was cold. The front of Woodall's shirt felt damp and sticky. “Shit.”
I shifted his bulk so he was sitting up. The light was dim, and I could still barely see. I looked at my hand. The sticky dampness I'd felt was blood.
I lifted Woodall's head up to feel for the carotid artery, although I figured it was quite useless. I'd held dead bodies in the jungles of Vietnam, and this one felt just like those. Checking the carotid was indeed pointless. Moving his head gave me the cause of his death. His throat had been slit.
I'm afraid that the vision that flashed across my mind was that of my father. One Saturday afternoon he was showing my brothers and me how to fix something on his car. He'd just toggled some switch or other and started the car when a puff of smoke and a tongue of flame rose from inside the engine. My father stood there for a minute. We boys backed away a few steps, wondering if the car or my father would explode. He just stood there with his hands at his side, staring into the engine. All he said was, “This is a revoltin' development.”
My sentiments exactly.
I looked at the body. I held out my blood-covered hands. With nothing to wipe them on I tried using the floor of the car as the nearest dry surface. I got most of it off, but stray smears and small patches of stickiness remained. Touching the body had also gotten blood on the front of my shirt and pants.
I looked around to see if there was anyone in the vicinity to call to for help.
Nobody. I didn't need to be involved in a murder investigation in the South. Who knew what lunacy might be perpetrated?
I hesitated to go for help. The only other person who
had been here was the murderer. The crime scene could hardly be more pure or better preserved. With the light at hand I did some examining. Woodall's shirt was bloody, but the car itself had very little blood on it. With that kind of wound more than his shirt would have gotten soaked; the area around the body would be saturated. The pavement surrounding the car had no visible signs of blood, either. Obviously, he'd been killed somewhere else and brought to this spot. Why our car? To implicate me? Scott? Both of us? Or maybe every killer looks for a handy spot to plop a dead body, and our rent-a-car happened to be it.
I didn't see signs of a struggle. His clothes seemed to be in order, not tugged or pulled out; his gun was in its holster, his hands lay by his side, and I couldn't see any signs of abrasions or bruising. Whoever did it either was very clever—maybe drugged him—or was powerful enough to hold him still with one hand while slitting his throat with the other. A very powerful person—or several people. Of course, there could be all kinds of signs of restraint that I missed. I ran my hand along the floor, then under and on the seat as well as under the sheriff. I found nothing.
I looked back toward the hospital. As yet no one had emerged onto the parking lot. It was at the back of the hospital, away from the street, although I doubted if much traffic existed anywhere in Brinard in the early morning hours. Even now I heard no sound of activity. There were two other cars within a hundred feet of this one and another clump of cars closer to the street. I presumed these belonged to the hospital workers. Possibly we hadn't been singled out. Maybe the killer or killers had simply picked this one because it was farthest from any light.
I wished I could just get in the car, take the body, and dump it off the nearest bridge. I presumed no one had seen the murderer but half the town would be on hand to see
me try to surreptitiously slip the body into the nearest swamp.
I sighed. There really wasn't much else to do. I walked back into the emergency-room entrance.
The nurse saw the blood on my clothes and jumped to her feet.
“I'm fine,” I said. “The sheriff is in the backseat of a rented white Oldsmobile about two hundred feet from the front door. It probably won't do any good, but you should send some medical personnel out there.”
“Why?”
“His throat has been slit.”
She swung into action. She pressed a button with one hand and reached for a phone with the other. I stopped in a john down the hall and washed the rest of the blood off my hands. By the time I got outside, the wisps of fog were gone, and it was full daylight.
A blue police car with white lettering saying “Brinard County” sat about ten feet from our car. The cop car had its Mars lights rotating. A blond guy, who fit his brown polyester uniform pants very nicely, stared into the backseat of my rental car. Three white-coated emergency-room workers stood in a clump about five feet from the body.
I joined the cop. He had a lovely blond mustache and short blond hair mostly covered by a brown cap. He might have been in his mid-twenties. He wore a tan shirt that emphasized great pecs. He barely took notice of me but kept staring at the backseat of the car.
I tapped him on the shoulder. He didn't move.
“I found the body,” I said.
“Was he dead?” the cop asked.
“When I found him? Yes.” I thought it best not to add that “I found the body” implies that it was dead when I discovered it. I was extremely tired, but I wanted to stick
with a general policy of quiet cooperation and compliance.
He just kept staring at the body. Since the cop's responses seemed to be limited, I strolled over to the medical people. One woman and two men.
“Shouldn't we try to revive him?” one asked.
“You can tell he's dead.”
“I know he's dead.”
“We should do something. He's the sheriff. He can't just be dead.”
“Can't be much deader.”
“Y'all see a point in attaching electrodes, starting transfusions, or inserting IVs? Blood would just flow right out again.”
That they could recognize dead when they saw it I thought was a plus.
Another cop car drove up. A very slender, dark-haired guy got out. He seemed to be about the same age and height as the blond.
“What's up, Harvey?” he said to the blond.
Harvey pointed. “Sheriff's dead.”
The new guy walked up to the car, opened the back door, lifted the sheriff's head, and whistled. He rejoined Harvey. “He's dead all right.”
I was pleased at this new confirmation of the obvious.
“This is gonna be big news,” the dark-haired one said. “Every official in the county is gonna want to be in on this one.”
I wasn't sure which one I wanted to interrogate me. The dark-haired one's hips were narrow and his shoulders broad, but the blond had lovely muscles. I doubted they'd let me choose.
Mostly I stood around as a crowd gathered and what must have been half the officials in the county examined either the body, the car, the ground, or all of the above, in general doing everything but preserving the integrity of
the crime scene. Several herds of demented elephants on their morning stampede couldn't have obscured the evidence any more than these people did.
No one suggested we adjourn to a nice air-conditioned car or building to avoid the heat and humidity, already unpleasant at this hour.
Around ten a lean, grizzled man with dark circles under his eyes drove up. He wore a very light gray suit and tie. His full head of hair was cut short and was totally white.
Everyone stepped back and allowed him space. They waited for him to speak. He barely looked at the backseat of the rental car. The first thing he said was, “Cody, cordon off this area. Move all the people back, including the doctors and nurses.” The brown-haired guy moved to obey. So Cody was the name of the slender broad-shouldered one. The older man put his hands on his hips, gazed at the sky, the surrounding buildings, finally the pavement and the car. He saw me and walked over.
“You found the body?”
I hadn't seen anybody tell him. Somehow word got around in this town as if everybody had their own Burr County CNN antenna attached inside their skull.
I nodded.
“I'm Wainwright Richardson, the county coroner.” He did not offer his hand to be shaken. “I take over when the sheriff is incapacitated. I'll be handling the investigation. I want you to give your statement to Harvey.” He pointed to the blond.
At this moment Scott approached me from across the hospital parking lot.
“How's your dad?” I asked.
“Still breathing on his own. Shannon and Hiram are with him. They told me Peter was dead. What happened?”
“I found the sheriff in the back of our rent-a-car. Rent-a-corpse? Whichever. He was very dead.”
Harvey strolled over. I liked the way he hooked his thumbs on either side of his oversized buffalo-head belt buckle. He pointed at me. “I want to talk to you.”
“Don't worry about me,” I said to Scott. “I'll be fine. Get back to your dad.” Scott hesitated. “It's okay,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”
He still hesitated, but Harvey placed his hand on my elbow, less than a yank but more than gently, and led me toward a cop car.
I was sweating in the morning heat. The parking lot had no shade, and I could already feel warmth from the concrete radiating through my shoes.
We sat in the front seat. He took a hand-sized note pad from the dashboard.
“Can you turn the air-conditioning on?” I asked.
“Listen, faggot, everybody knows what happened yesterday between you and the sheriff. If I can hang this on you, I will.”
The towering anger triggered by that kind of unfairness ran smack into my cooperation vow and my good sense. Calm was absolutely essential at this point. I said, “Officer, I'm willing to do anything I can to help. I found the body. I had no reason to kill him. I barely knew him. I've been at the hospital all night. It would help me if you didn't address me as ‘faggot.'”
“I don't give a shit what would help you. The sheriff was my coach in high school and my friend. He helped me get this job. He's dead and I'll call you anything I want. Just answer my questions.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“Don't start that lawyer shit with me. Just talk. I want everything you did last night in order.” He held his hand poised with pen over pad.
So I told him. Just to be nasty, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to snatch glimpses of his polyester-covered
crotch. This is a great way to make a straight man feel uncomfortable. Once he caught my glance and quickly looked away.
By the time we were finished, I'd sweated through the back of my shirt and the seat of my pants. The window on my side faced the east and the sun shone in on me. The open window let in what little breeze there was.
Harvey flipped his notebook shut. “Stay there,” he growled. He got out and walked directly to the coroner.
During the interrogation someone had been taking crime-scene photos and another person dusted for fingerprints.
I gazed at the assembled mass of gawkers. More vehicles had arrived, including an ambulance and one more cop car. Twenty-five feet away a crowd of thirty or forty people stood behind yellow crime-scene tape. As each new spectator arrived, the car where the body still sat in the heat was pointed out and then fingers would swing in my direction.
I saw Clara Thorton in earnest conversation with Wainwright Richardson.
Minutes later I spotted Scott trying to enter through the police cordon, but Cody stopped him. No one seemed to be noticing me, so I got out of the car. I strolled over to Scott.
“News on your dad?” I asked.
“I was just upstairs. Nothing. You look miserable.”
“I've been sweating in that damn car.”
Several officers noticed us and pointed. Cody, Harvey, Clara, and Wainwright moved toward us. The crowd behind the police cordon surged in our direction. I saw teenagers and little kids on bikes, older women in sun hats, young men and women in jeans, and elderly couples in khakis. I guess there isn't an approved gawker-at-tragedy uniform.
I observed the approaching mass of officialdom. “It's the cavalry,” I said, “and I don't think they're riding to the rescue.”
Over their shoulders I could see Sheriff Woodall's body being placed in a body bag and into an ambulance.
“What's happened so far?” Scott asked.
“I was questioned. They should be done. I never got your stuff from the house.”
“No big deal.”
When the group of officials arrived, Richardson said, “Mr. Mason, we'll want you to come down to the police station to sign a statement. We also will have a few more questions.”
This had gone on just about long enough. I said, “I'll want a lawyer present, and I'll need to make some calls.”
The three others looked at Richardson. He gripped his chin in his hand, nodded slowly, and said, “We'll decide that when we get to the station.”
I didn't like the sound of that and began a protest. So did Scott, but two cops positioned themselves on either side of me. They didn't cuff me, but I wasn't free to leave, either.
“I'll get you out,” Scott called to me.
“Call Todd Bristol,” I shouted back. Todd was our lawyer in Chicago. I was beginning to dislike this big-time.
I was placed in the backseat of Cody's police car. He did not turn on the air-conditioning, but the rush of the wind through the open windows as the car moved gave some relief.
BOOK: Rust On the Razor
4.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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