Fatal Obsession Read online

  “I don’t know,” Gail shrugged. “Not a lot, I would guess. He’s been having a rough time. All farmers have.”

  “Shit,” Matt said, “I been hearing how rough farmers have it since I was knee high. But they all manage to drive new cars and air-conditioned tractors and spend the winters in Texas. I should have it so bad.”

  “Would he share the farm with your daughter and her husband?” I asked Gail.

  “I imagine. If he has to. Like everyone else he’ll take anything he can get.”

  “Who else?” Matt prompted.

  “The WILD people,” Gail said.

  “Who the fuck are they?” Matt asked.

  “An environmental group. They want the farm, at least the part down by the creek, made into a park, with the rest of it left as it is, as a wildlife refuge and wilderness area. Not even farmed. They claim there’s some original prairie grass out there. I guess there’s not much of the stuff left anywhere in the whole country.”

  “So what’s in it for us?” Matt asked.

  “The main benefit would be a tax deduction, as I understand it. Plus good will, as they put it. I think Billy works with WILD some, doesn’t he, Curt? He could probably tell us more about it.”

  Curt didn’t respond and Gail didn’t seem surprised.

  “Well, fuck ’em,” Matt said. “Sound like radicals to me. Let’s get to the big boys. The coal and oil and agribusiness.”

  “Well,” Gail began, “Black Diamond Coal, they were here a long time ago, ran most of the mines around the country, them and Sunshine. But those were shaft mines, pony mines. Too expensive after natural gas came in, and the coal was too dirty, so they shut them all down. Now they’re strictly strip miners.”

  “How do people feel about strip mining around here?” I asked.

  “They don’t like it much, but they like the unemployment rate even less. There’d be some bad feeling, but not much.”

  “What’s their offer?” Matt asked.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” Gail said. “I’m not sure I understand it all, and they didn’t waste much time explaining it to me.”

  “Are they looking at an outright purchase?” I asked. “Or just subsurface rights?”

  “Just the rights,” Gail said. “But all of them, not just coal.”

  “Is it a royalty arrangement, or what?” I asked.

  “Royalty, plus a price per acre. Same kind of arrangement as the oil folks want, actually. The coal people will pay one hundred an acre plus two percent per ton extracted. The oil people will only pay thirty per acre and a four point six percent royalty per barrel on oil actually pumped out of there. Of course,” Gail added, “they didn’t sit down and haggle with me. I imagine both groups will go higher.”

  “If they hit oil out there we’ll be shittin’ in tall cotton,” Matt said dreamily. “Millionaires, each of us.”

  “If,” I said. “They’ve been looking for oil around here since we were kids. Is there any reason to think they’ll find some now when they didn’t before?” I looked at Gail.

  “Not that I know of,” she said. “But I imagine technology has improved in that time.”

  “So has gullibility,” I answered with a glance at Matt. “Is there anyone else, or does that cover it?” I was eager to get it over, to steer the talk away from money. I glanced at Curt, to see if he was as shamed as I was, but he seemed not to have heard a word. He still sat there, squeezing his cap, breathing through his mouth in whistling gasps, dying or giving a good imitation of it.

  “The agribusiness people talk the best game in town,” Matt said. “Outfit in Illinois, been buying up all kinds of farms around here lately. Clark Jaspers called me last week and told me all about it.”

  “How much?” I asked, conscious of aping Matt.

  “Jaspers wouldn’t quote me a figure. But he said they paid eleven hundred an acre for the Kenwood place six months ago. It’s over in Wayne County. Can’t be much better land than ours.”

  “Can we get that much?” I asked Gail.

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I’d say six hundred, tops. There’s lots of timber out there.”

  “Which is still close to two hundred K,” Matt pointed out.

  “Split four ways,” Gail countered, subdividing his greed.

  “And a drop in the bucket compared to what we’d get if they find oil out there,” I said.

  “Isn’t any oil,” Curt said, speaking for the first time.

  “How do you know?” Matt challenged.

  “Just do,” Curt said.

  Matt thought for a minute. “I’m a tad cash-poor these days,” he said finally. “Relatively speaking, I mean. The Towers. Other things. I say we take whoever puts the most money up front and get the hell out.”

  “Who would that most likely be?” I asked. “The Illinois people?”

  “Looks that way to me,” Matt said. “Let’s wheel and deal with Jaspers, jack them up as far as they’ll go, then give the figure to the oil and coal boys and see if they’ll match it. As far as I’m concerned the city and those ecology nuts are out of it already.” Matt began to pace at twice his previous speed. “I can handle the negotiations myself. I’ll get hold of Jaspers right now. Should wrap it up by tomorrow, then we can all go home.”

  I held up a hand. “Not yet, Matt. I want to think this thing over. I may not want to sell to the Illinois people, or even sell at all.”

  Matt’s face clouded. “Hell, Marsh. Don’t be stupid, now. Take the money and run.”

  “Maybe I will,” I said, “but don’t rush me.”

  “Dammit. I can’t keep that woman up there on the leavings of a fucking sharecropper, for God’s sakes. I mean … well, you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t say anything. Gail walked over and put her hand on my arm, her eyes grateful for what she assumed was our confederacy.

  “Here’s what I think,” Gail said. “I think a strip mine is criminal, and I think the oil people are sleazy quick-money types that are trying to get something for nothing, and I think the city’s problems aren’t going to be solved by us practically donating our farm to the good citizens of Chaldea. The Tanner plot is family land, farm land. And my daughter and her husband want to farm it, want to keep it in the family, want to keep that land doing what it’s been doing for a hundred years. I think it’s Karen’s right, Marsh. Her birthright. Don’t you? She and Bruce are the only Tanners who come after us.”

  “And Billy,” I said.

  “Oh. Billy. I forgot.” Gail looked apologetically at Curt, but he didn’t seem to have heard her. “What do you say, Marsh? Can I call Karen and Paul?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what I think yet, Gail. I want to consider it, maybe talk to some people. I’m not quite as willing to write off the town’s needs as the rest of you seem to be. Chaldea was pretty good to all of us, all things considered. Maybe we should help it if we can.”

  “Bull poop,” Matt muttered. “You got out of here as fast as you could and so did I and so did everyone else with brains. Gail stayed because her man was here and Curt, well, look what Chaldea’s done to him. Fuck the town. Stick a fork in it. It’s done.”

  I looked at Curt. His attitude puzzled me. From the time he was little he’d been the only one of us who’d truly loved the land, who learned what went on out there beyond the city limits, how corn was planted and beans were picked and lambs were sheared and cattle were slaughtered. He had joined the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H, run around with farm kids and spent a lot of time out at the farm we were now discussing, putting up hay, detasseling seed corn, mending fence, spreading manure, doing the chores that farm kids do. And now Curt claimed he wanted out. I was certain it had something to do with Billy and it was more complex than the reason Gail had suggested, but I wasn’t sure quite what it was.

  “What do you want the money for, Curt?” I asked him, half in jest but hoping he would answer. “Why are you so anxious to sell?”

  I was smiling bu
t Curt was not. He looked at me for the first time since we’d begun our debate. “I got some expenses coming up,” he said simply.

  “What expenses?”

  Curt frowned. “Getting kind of nosy, aren’t you, Marsh?”

  “Just trying to do what’s right, Curt.”

  “So am I,” Curt countered. “And I don’t need help.”

  “Well, I’m not going to sit around here for a week while you figure out how to turn this into a fucking tithe, Marsh,” Matt blurted. “You think you’re better than the rest of us, but you’re not. Everyone thought you were going to be so great, big jock, big brain, but what are you? A nothing, that’s what. A fucking gumshoe nothing.”

  Even Matt seemed shocked by his diatribe by the time he’d concluded. He turned away from me and retreated toward the kitchen. “Marsh,” Gail began. “He doesn’t mean it.”

  I held up a hand. “It’s all right. Not everything he said was wrong, anyway.”

  And then there was silence again, broken only by the rumblings of someone upstairs, Pilar or Tom, I didn’t know which. And then the phone rang once, and moments later Matt came in from the kitchen and looked at Curt. “It’s for you,” he said. “A Sheriff Eason, or something like that.”

  Curt frowned and pushed himself slowly off the couch, leaving the room without a sound. Matt went to a window and stared through it. Gail and I looked at each other. “Billy’s probably in trouble again,” she said softly. “He’s been arrested at least three times. Poor Curt.”

  “Fucking kids,” Matt said to the window. “Glad I don’t got any.”

  When Curt came back into the room his hat was out of his hands and on his head. Some strong emotion had savaged his face and splashed his eyes. When he tried to speak nothing but a croak emerged, so he coughed and tried again. “They just found Billy. Hanging from a tree in the park. They say he’s dead.”

  “Curt,” Gail said. “Oh, no.”

  Curt nodded stupidly. “They want me down there.” He started toward the door.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “Shall I go and sit with Laurel?” Gail asked, her voice shrill with urgency. “I think I should. Did you call her?”

  “No. I … no. Would you do it?”

  “Of course. Oh, Curt.”

  I put on my coat and went to the door. Matt went over to Curt and put a hand on his shoulder. “I better stay with Pilar. But if you need anything, just call. We’ll be here or at the motel.”

  “Call. Sure.” Curt stumbled toward me. I guided him through the door and off the porch, toward the body of his only child.

  Seven

  The park was near the high school. It was hilly and wooded, circumscribed by a narrow gravel road, with parking near the tennis courts and swimming pool. The old fire engine was still on blocks for kids to climb on, and the wooden shelter houses were there, too. In a vale across the road were the Boy Scout cabin and the VFW hut.

  A sheriff’s car and a city police car and a doctor’s Chrysler were crowded into the parking area, and a group of men were huddled under a huge oak far down the slope toward the little caretaker’s cabin. I didn’t know what to say to Curt, so I didn’t say anything. It seemed absurd for us to be walking through a forest of swings and merry-go-rounds, rolling barrels and twisting slides, on our way to see a corpse.

  Curt was silent, his work boots crunching to dust the twigs and leaves and acorns in his path. The hands at his sides were more like maces than like fists. Once he muttered words I wasn’t meant to hear.

  As we approached the group of men one of them looked our way, said something to the others, then came to meet us. He was large and red-haired, and wore the Eisenhower jacket and khaki slacks of a law officer. When he reached us he stuck a giant hand toward Curt. Curt didn’t notice or grip it, and the hand fell back. “He still hangin’, Rex?” Curt asked, his words disembodied, his eyes afraid to search the branches beyond us.

  The sheriff shook his head. “We cut him down. He’s over by the tree. I’m sorry as hell about it, Curt. Real sorry.”

  Curt shouldered his way past the sheriff and the sheriff called out to another man, who hurried to Curt’s side and guided him toward the shrouded lump that lay on the ground beneath the oak. “That’s young Doc Yarrow,” the sheriff said to me. “He’s coroner this year. He’ll watch to see if Curt needs help with it.” The sheriff’s eyes found mine. “Rex Eason,” he said, and shoved the giant hand toward me.

  “Marsh Tanner.” The hand swallowed mine and chewed on it. “Curt’s brother.”

  “From Frisco?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Heard you was in town. Hell of a way to welcome you home.”

  I nodded. “Any doubt it’s Billy?”

  “Nope. Had him in my car a dozen times or more. Know Billy better’n I know my own boy.”

  “Suicide?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Looks it. Drug that picnic table over under that low branch, there. Flipped the rope up over it and tied one end to the trunk, then made a little slip knot and stuck his head through and stepped off. Yep, he sure could have done it himself.”

  “But he could have had help.”

  The sheriff shrugged again. “I didn’t figure Billy for the hangin’ type, myself.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too mad at things; too many demons he was tryin’ to kill. Seemed like a man with a long list who wasn’t about to quit till he’d gone through it.”

  “What kind of list, exactly?” I asked.

  “You ask most any folks around town, they’ll tell you what Billy Tanner worked at most was making people mad.”

  I wanted to question the sheriff some more but I heard the wordless noise of grief and looked toward the tree that muffled it. Curt was sobbing, leaning on the gnarled trunk, his back bent, one hand pressed to his face, clearly close to collapse. His torso arched stiffly over the shrouded body of his son as though mortised to shield it from further harm. I hurried to Curt’s side and took his arm and led him to the picnic table and sat him down. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He nodded but it was not an answer. A young man came over and sat on the bench beside Curt. “I can give you a tranquilizer, Mr. Tanner,” he said smoothly. “It might make things easier the rest of the day.”

  Curt shook his head. “Don’t want it easy,” he said thickly. “Your boy dies, it should be hard; the hardest thing ever in your life.”

  The younger man nodded and looked at me. He had the clean confidence of a doctor, and the serenity of one who hadn’t been in practice long. “I’m Mike Yarrow,” he said. “Acting coroner.”

  “Are you Dan Yarrow’s son?” I asked after I’d introduced myself.

  He nodded. “Do you know Dad?”

  “Used to. A hell of a shortstop, your dad.”

  Yarrow smiled. “That’s what he tells me. Often.” Yarrow’s obvious affection for his father seemed almost a mockery of Curt and Billy.

  I was thinking about Doctor Yarrow’s father, and about how important it had been to be good at games when I was young, when I noticed the sheriff was about to leave. I hurried to where he was standing. “What you were saying before,” I said, “about Billy and his demons and his list. You have any specific demon in mind that might have hooked Billy to that limb?”

  The sheriff looked at me from beneath a heavy bush of brow. “You’re a detective, is what I hear,” he said calmly, passing the time of day.

  I nodded.

  “Been close to a lot of homicide investigations, I guess.”

  “A few,” I acknowledged.

  “Do it a little different here than in the big city. See that fellow over there by the body? Little feller in the Sunday suit?”

  I looked and nodded.

  “From the BCI. State Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Works out of the state capital, flew him down in their own plane after I called it in. Took him a half hour; would take three to drive it.”

  “If you think it wa
s suicide, why did you call him in?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Hunch, I guess. Like I said, Billy didn’t seem the type to mess with his own life. He was too busy messing with other folks’.”

  “Anything more tangible than that to go on, Sheriff?”

  Eason smiled. “Nope. So suicide it is. For now.” He turned to leave.

  “Can you stick around awhile?” I asked him.

  “Nope. Big fight out at Mickey’s last night. I got a jail full of tough guys I got to get rid of.”

  “Can I come by and see you later? To talk some more about Billy?”

  “Not today, you can’t.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  I watched the sheriff leave the park after saying a few words to the BCI man, then I motioned for Doctor Yarrow to join me. “Any doubt about the cause of death?” I asked when I saw we were out of Curt’s hearing.

  “Not that I know of now,” he said. “Why?”

  “No reason. You doing an autopsy?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do it yourself?”

  “Right.”

  “Done many?”

  “Ten or so. Why?” His puzzled frown fit uncomfortably in his face. Doctors are used to knowing more than anyone about everything.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” I went on.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Look for a sign that Billy was unconscious before the rope went around his neck. Drugs, a blow to the head, something like that.”

  Yarrow frowned above his mustache, his black eyes hard and probing. “Have you some reason to think this wasn’t suicide, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Just one, so far.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It doesn’t run in the family.”

  I left young Doctor Yarrow rolling his exasperated eyes and went back to where Curt was sitting. “I’m going to look at the body for a second,” I told him. “You stay here. Then we’ll go.”

  “Not till they take him.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, Curt. The coroner will take the body as soon as the BCI’s through, and that could take hours. Why don’t we go?”

  “Not till they take him,” Curt repeated. I patted his shoulder and went over to the tree and bent down and pulled back the sheet of brown canvas that covered Billy’s body.