Greasy Bend Page 6

  Though the speeder had a quarter-mile lead, Bond knew that it wasn’t Jeff Lang, whose clown car would have spilled its drive train long ago. She radioed her dispatcher in Tish and put the Charger through its paces. Holding at 120, she gained on the speeder. Pursuit left her cold unless she had a stake in the chase, which she didn’t—yet. As black stands of hackberry trees shot past her window, she reached into a bag of Fritos and tossed a handful into her mouth. They reminded her of Bill Maytubby’s strange eating habits. He told her once that he didn’t eat “processed foods.” That tickled her. “Hell, Bill. What can you eat that’s not processed—persimmons and raw turnips?” He said something about frozen pizza and fish sticks, but she knew good and well he ate raw turnips. She had seen them on the seat of his cruiser.

  Near the Bromide turnoff, the speeder decelerated. Bond was about a hundred yards behind the silver SUV. She thought it was going to turn into the little hills, but it pulled onto the shoulder, hazards flashing. Bond shrugged to herself, radioed Tish that she had stopped a silver 2013 Volvo XC60 SUV, picked up her clipboard, and stepped into the cold prairie wind.

  While the passenger window was descending, Bond looked at the trails of blood blown all the way to the back of the roof. She took the license and registration from a stocky man in late middle age, his thinning hair just turning gray. He wore a dark blue suit and stylish glasses.

  “I didn’t see you until just now,” he said, tilting his head to see her face, way above the SUV.

  Bond was silent. The license said “Frank Sulak,” Cache address. She copied what she had to copy, very slowly, though her hands were cold. In the cruiser, she ran his license. Two minor citations over a decade. Fifty-seven over—what she was citing him for now—stuck out.

  While Sulak was taking his citation and paperwork, Bond brought her face closer. “You can do a year for killing a bald eagle.”

  Sulak instantly wiped a creeping smirk off his face. Bond saw this—when he realized this rube hulk could cuff him, bald eagle or not.

  “That was a bald eagle? That’s too bad. Noble birds. I would never inten—”

  “Rabbit he had—broke my windshield.” Bond turned her back on him and walked back to her cruiser.

  “I would be happy to pay for the damage,” he shouted, his body twisted half around.

  Bond slammed her door, pulled onto the highway, and accelerated slowly toward Tishomingo.

  CHAPTER 13

  Maytubby drove north on Jehovah Road. The ancient Arbuckle Mountains were russet bison humps on the horizon. He was looking for a propane jockey. These guys got around, especially in a cold winter like this one. They worked outside, close to roads. And they were bored, so they noticed what passed by.

  Where Jehovah struck State 53 near Milo, Maytubby spotted a Sooner Propane truck next to a leaning hall-and-parlor. When he pulled into the drive, he saw that the guy filling the silver tank was a young woman, her long hair swirling around her earmuffs. She was already staring curiously at the truck photo while he walked toward her. The name stitched on her coveralls was Sarah.

  Yes, she had heard about the robbery and murder. “Makes you sick. That man had little children.” She shook her head slowly as she watched the pressure gauge.

  Maytubby held the photo out to her. “Yesterday? Today?”

  “I see that kind of truck, same color, a lot out here. But. This morning.” She lowered her head and looked at him conspiratorially. “Just before the sun came up, I saw one on Fifty-Three between Springer and Gene Autry.” She nodded east. “Maybe because I saw the security pictures on my computer before I left for work, it caught my attention. I was filling a tank when this truck came by, kind of slow. One guy driving; all the other seats and the back’re empty. The truck turns up a long driveway that goes to a trailer house, and this guy, medium height, pops out of the back, jumps down, and goes into the house. It was too damn cold, that double cab was empty, and that guy didn’t look like a Mexican.”

  “Driveway?”

  “Last before the railroad tracks and the Ardmore airport entrance, north side. White-and-gray trailer house, like most. Clothesline, little red pickup. Don’t know what kind. That old, they all look alike to me.

  “Left the non-Mexican there?”

  She nodded. “Then headed toward the Washita.”

  “You notice if the guy who got out was wearing a uniform?”

  “I read about that. Didn’t look like it.”

  “Anybody throw anything out of the truck?”

  “Like a pirate mask?”

  “That would be helpful.”

  “No,” she said with a faint smile.

  “Anything stand out about the driver?”

  “Husky. No beard. That’s about all I could tell.”

  “A fat pirate.”

  “There’s lots of fat pirates.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  Maytubby handed her his card. “In case you see one.”

  While he was a few miles from the Ardmore airport, Hannah Bond called to tell him about the embezzlement case in Marietta. After he put his phone away, he spotted the trailer, which came with all the right accessories: a red 1980 Chevy LUV in the drive, two pipe clothesline poles in the backyard, a woodpile, and a metal chimney. The woodpile was neatly stacked oak.

  Nobody answered his knock. Through the only window without its white miniblinds closed, he saw two pairs of clean insulated coveralls folded on a chair, an unstained straw Western hat for summer. Medium-size outdoor laborer. No trace of the guard uniform or black gloves or sneakers. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, only clean ones in a drainer. Next to an avocado telephone lay a clean notepad and a sharpened pencil. The kitchen counter and appliances were squeaky clean. There were no ashes in front of the small square woodstove.

  An amber gleam caught his eye. The late sun lit a half-full bottle of Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon, faceted like a gem, with the little metal jockey and horse atop the cork. Maytubby remembered Tommy Hewitt’s girls singing along with the television: “One of these things is not like the others …” Whoever bought the whiskey felt big about sharing, thought the poor working stiff would appreciate a taste of the high life. Looking back to the dish drainer, he spotted one highball glass. On the counter, beside a microwave, a plastic liter of Old Cornwipe. So the hooch patron knew what to upgrade.

  Maytubby walked across the yard and looked into the fifty-five-gallon drum where the trash was burned. Cold ashes, a few sooty food cans. The little red pickup wore a thick layer of dust, even the windshield. No one had driven it for years. Behind the mobile home, he found the waffle-tread prints of an off-road or dual-sport motorcycle. Dual-sport was street legal.

  Maytubby found a little patch of blackjack oaks along the BNSF tracks to screen the cruiser. He looked out over stadium-size freight warehouses that faced Ardmore Municipal’s runway. A cargo jet swung onto final approach.

  Jill would be home from work. Maytubby called her. “You’re still in the field,” she said. “Unless the City of Ada built an international airport last night.”

  “No pulling the wool over your eyes.”

  “Really, where are you?”

  “Ardmore Municipal.”

  “Oh, yeah. That weird hubbub in the middle of nowhere, like Los Alamos or Las Vegas. You on a stakeout?”

  “No. I’m parked behind some trees, waiting for a suspicious person to return home from work so I can observe his movements.”

  “So, how is that not a stakeout?”

  “I’m trying to free my profession from the fetters of machismo.”

  “You can probably strike off the leg irons without ditching the cool words.”

  “I think you’ve naturalized these gendered words.”

  “I think you’re full of shit as a Christmas turkey. You can’t go with me to see N
ichole tonight. That’s why you’re calling, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell her you’re on a stakeout.”

  “Give my love to her and the girls. See you tomorrow.”

  Coming from the east, the yellow cycle crossed the tracks at 5:21. So the guy’s job was ten, fifteen miles into the rock prairie, maybe at a dolomite quarry. Maytubby gave the motorcyclist time to get away from his bike and into the house. Then he parked on the highway and walked softly up the drive, on the grass beside the gravel. It was near dark.

  Before he knocked, he watched the cyclist, still wearing coveralls and thick gloves, pick the Bourbon up in his right hand, hold it up to the naked kitchen bulb. Then he slid it down the counter and poured two fingers of his cheap whiskey into the tumbler. He bit the right glove’s index finger, tugged the glove off. He was early thirties, wispy but trimmed soul patch. His ash-blond hair had recently been cut. His socks matched, and his nails were trimmed. Despite the booze, he had no gut.

  Too short to be the meticulous robber, too well-groomed to be the slob, too tall and right-handed to be the shooter. Did the pirate king keep a pit crew? A scout? There were no visible personal electronics. Maytubby watched him take off the other glove and zip out of his coveralls, which he folded and carried down the hall. He came back, turned on a small television, and fell back into a tattered recliner, holding his whiskey out in front so it wouldn’t spill on him.

  If this was one of the pirate band and Maytubby flushed him, the man wouldn’t lead him to the others. The bike’s license plate reflected enough inside light for Maytubby to memorize the numbers.

  It was full dark when Maytubby got back in his cruiser. He ran the plate—Francis Klaus, address in Bray, home of the Fighting Donkeys. Then he crossed the Washita on his way to Ada.

  At a Chickasaw Travel Stop, he bought a banana and an apple and stretched against the cruiser’s fender while he listened to Jill’s cell go to voice mail. Banjo lesson night, he remembered. Or she might have gone to Nichole’s. He texted that he would see her the next night. In an hour, he was standing on the porch of his old gable-and-wing house, a relic of Indian Territory. It overlooked a Katy railroad cut that had been converted to a bike path. A single naked bulb swung above him in the wind, the shadow of his arm and keys tracing the slab like a pendulum.

  It was cold inside. The single ceiling bulb in each room dimly lit panel curtains that trembled in window drafts. A purple metal tumbler half full of water sat on his kitchen table, beside it a dog-eared paperback of The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. From the refrigerator, he took a small paper bag of nut meats from the native pecan tree that shaded his house. He laid the bag on the table and walked into his bedroom, unzipping his uniform coat as he went. He turned on the radio by his bed and listened to NPR news on Chickasaw-supported KGOU-Ada. He hung his uniform neatly in the closet, then donned his country civvies: a checkered flannel shirt, jeans, and a denim jacket. Work boots, he couldn’t do. The New Balance runners blew the whistle on the whole outfit, but he wore them anyway.

  Back in the kitchen, he filled a half-gallon milk jug with water; put the pecans in his pocket; grabbed an insulated camo hat, a set of stained Billy Bob teeth, and some old gloves; and turned out the kitchen light. In the yard, he pulled off his cap and mussed his hair. The bully V-8 in his ’65 Ford pickup roared to life, its torque jostling the cab.

  On the dark empty back roads, he made good time to Jehovah Road. The nearest house to the welder’s shop was a quarter mile. Flickers through its closed miniblinds told him the folks were watching television. A locked single-pipe gate blocked the shop’s driveway, but a little trail across the unfenced land next door led Maytubby into a knot of scrub oak. He pocketed his Maglite and set off through the scrub toward the rear of the shop. Coyotes whooped in the low hills. The moon revealed no back entrance, but Maytubby tried each overlap of corrugated metal sheets until he found a patch of rust around some rivets and peeled the sheet back just far enough to squeeze inside.

  He snapped on his flashlight and swept the room. A trailered engine-driven welder was parked on the dirt floor. A hand truck held some gas cylinders and a cutting kit. A functional steel workbench was littered with gloves and metal scraps, a hood, some dirty welder’s caps. The dirt floor bore a confusion of foot and tire prints. Near the front of the shop, his light found a dented fifty-gallon barrel. It stank of burned plastic. The welder would not have burned trash inside, and indeed, the barrel had dug a wide path where it was dragged in. Maytubby found a length of rebar and stirred the ashes.

  When he raised the corrugated rebar, a short black snake was draped over it. He kept his light inside the barrel as he lowered his face. Then he spat on the snake, and soot melted off its brass scales. A zipper.

  A vehicle on Jehovah Road slowed and then turned into the welder’s drive. Maytubby dropped the zipper into the barrel, then put the rebar back where it belonged. He switched off his Maglite. The vehicle’s headlights shot through gaps in the shop’s wall. Mussing the floor dirt as he backtracked, Maytubby pushed back the metal flap, eased outside, and lay on the ground. He heard the gate chain clinking, the vehicle moving forward, then the sliding-door chain rattling.

  Maytubby peered into the shop. The headlights went dark. He hissed softly into the grass. When the door creaked open, nothing but moonlight lit the frame. A male figure, medium height and build, with a stocking cap and gloves, moved from an older pickup (not a stubby Bronco) to the barrel. The man grasped its lip like a steering wheel, tilted the barrel toward him, and rolled it on its bottom rim, hand-over-hand, toward the pickup bed.

  When the loading noise began, Maytubby sprinted for the Ford. He heard the lock chains and the other pickup’s engine as he ran. When he spun onto Jehovah Road, he was a half mile behind the northbound pickup. He did not turn on the Ford’s headlights but, like Jill Milton, navigated by the moon’s luster. Maytubby knew that if he didn’t spoil the tail, the investigation was a search warrant ahead.

  The pickup did not stop for any crossing roads. Its driver turned off the headlights briefly as he approached them, so he could see lights from another vehicle nearing the crossroads. On the Caddo Creek bridge, the pickup stopped. Maytubby was still far enough in the rear he didn’t have to brake and spill red light on the prairie. He switched off the ignition and coasted to a stop while the driver swung up into the bed, lifted the barrel, and banged it on the bridge guardrail to dislodge the ashes.

  The creek was small and sluggish. The guy would dump most of the ashes on sand, and if he hit water, the zippers would sink. The pickup’s lights came back on, and it sped north. After it found State 53 and headed east, Maytubby was forced to turn on his headlights.

  For a while, the two pickups retraced Maytubby’s earlier route, past the trailer, through Gene Autry, over the Washita. Then the barrel pickup turned onto a dirt road Maytubby recognized as Powell. It wound up through rocky badlands favored by deer hunters and strip miners. It branched into smaller roads and trails that wound among mining pits and spoil banks—land that had been worked over. He drove past Powell, then, just over a rise, turned off his lights, made a U-turn, and fell in a half mile or so behind the barrel truck.

  This moonlight tail was much harder. The road and the rocky landscape it threaded looked a lot alike, and the road twisted so often, Maytubby lost sight of the barrel truck. The old Ford jolted over some large rocks and shuddered over washboard. The moonlit spines of moving deer caught his eye, and he stopped to let them cross the road.

  After a few winding miles, he topped a ridge overlooking smaller hills and spoil banks. The ice-haloed moon turned the white rocks blue. Ahead, taillights emerged from behind a hill. They quickly flashed as brake lights, and the truck made a right off Powell. Maytubby waited sixty seconds and followed. He knew the intersection, had always assumed the trail was a driveway. Most of the drives were long, so nobody would hear
him drive by on Powell and make his way by back roads to Mill Creek.

  Approaching the drive, he cranked down the driver’s window so he could listen and looked out the passenger window for any light that might show through the scrubby cedars. An owl cooed down in the wash.

  He was thirty yards from the intersection when headlights blazed across Powell Road and then pivoted toward him. He slammed on his brakes as a pickup made directly for him. It stopped two feet from his bumper, and its driver sprang from the cab. Maytubby snapped on his hat and set his gag teeth before the driver appeared at his window, breathing heavily. He was short and stout, and his breath stank of drink.

  “The fuck you driving out here ’thout no lights? He squeezed a holster Maytubby could barely see but didn’t draw the pistol.

  Maytubby turned to face the man and waited a beat. “I’m guessin’ you’re not the game warden.”

  “The fuck you talkin’ about?”

  “See if I can put a little meat on the table. Growin’ kids is hungry.”

  “Where’s your gun at?”

  Maytubby rolled his eyes up at the cab’s ceiling gun mount, visible in the reflected headlights.

  The stubby man bent his knees, turned his head, and squinted up suspiciously. “That’s a shotgun.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What kinda retard hunts deer with a shotgun?”

  Maytubby shrugged. “My kind, I guess.”

  The short man breathed heavily.

  “Naw. I use slugs in place of buckshot.”

  “Slugs. That’s some hillbilly shit.”

  “Works. Sometimes. I don’t go on people’s land. I shoot ’em in the road.”

  “Bucks, you mean.”

  “And does.”

  “But not people.”

  “What?” Maytubby said.

  The man lowered his head and shook it. Then he looked up and said, “You stay the fuck away from here. Way away.” He waved an arm at the moon. “You’ll kill one of my b … my cattle in the dark like this.”