Atonement (4 page)

“Was Ray checked over by a doctor?”  Logan said.

“Of course.  Why”

“Because strangling a fit young woman is not the easiest of things to do.  It would have been protracted.  She would have fought hard to save her life.  Did Ray have any scratches or bruises on him?”

Lyle shook his head.

“Did the clothing you will have retrieved from his house have any tears or damage that would indicate that he had been in a violent struggle?”

Again Lyle shook his head.  He could have dumped them.”

“And Ray isn’t a big muscular guy,”  Logan said.  “He’s maybe hundred forty, fifty pounds, and doesn’t look as if he’s ever worked out.”

“He was high on coke and booze, Logan.  That can boost a guy’s capabilities.”

“True.  But it wasn’t PCP.  What was Tanya wearing?”

“Why?”

“Humor me, Sheriff.”

“Blouse, skirt, a thick fleece jacket, and a pair of regular keds.”

“Did her parents notice anything missing?”

“No.”

“Did you check the side of the highway in the direction of town from the entrance to the Carver place?”

“No reason to.”

“Every reason to.  If Ray is telling the truth and Tanya walked away, then she would have set off for town.”

“And that’s what you were doing when my deputy stopped earlier to have a word with you?”

“Yeah, and I found this before he showed up, got heavy and attempted to assault me,”  Logan said, taking the folded napkin out of his pocket and placing it on the desktop in front of Lyle.

Lyle carefully unfolded the napkin to disclose a small metal pull tab.

“See a possible connection?”  Logan said.

“Long shot,”  Lyle said.  “You think that this is off the zipper of the girl’s fleece?”

“I think that it
could
be, and that if it is, then it lends a lot of weight to Ray’s account of what happened.”

“Freshen your coffee while I go and check the deceased’s property box,”  Lyle said, thinking that there was more chance of turning shit to gold than the pull tab belonging to Tanya Foster’s fleece.  But when he checked, it looked to be a match.  The pull tab was missing from the jacket, and he was sure that the one Logan had found would prove to have come from it.  That made him feel a little foolish.  He should have followed up on what the Marshall kid had said, but hadn’t thought there was any point in searching the side of the highway, due to the fact that they had not realized that anything was missing to be found.  Logan wasn’t a part of law enforcement now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still as sharp as he had reputably been.

“Looks like you got lucky,”  Lyle said, walking across the office to refill his own mug.  “Could be a match.  The tab is missing off the zipper of the girl’s jacket.”

“I didn’t get lucky Sheriff.  I looked for evidence, based on what Ray had said.”

“So you’d be looking for whom exactly?”

“A guy that was heading into town at the worst possible time for Tanya.  I speculate that he offered her a lift, and maybe she accepted and got in the car.  That means she knew him.  She’d just had a squabble with Ray, so I doubt very much that she would voluntarily get into a vehicle with a total stranger.”

“And how would he have known where Ray Marshall was parked, to dump the body in a place that would implicate the boy?”  Lyle said.

“I considered that the perp could have been some weirdo that was cruising and saw them park up.  He could have hung around and took his chance when Tanya stormed off and started for town.  But my money is on it being someone she both knew and trusted.  He may have asked her what was wrong, and she unburdened.  Told him that she’d had a quarrel with Ray, and that she’d left him on the trail to the Carver place.  He obviously got heavy, and one thing led to another.  Not a premeditated crime, just a guy that got way out of line and overreacted.”

“It’s a supposition,”  Lyle said.

“It’s more than that, it’s a strong possibility.  How else would the pull tab off her coat have found its way onto the side of the highway where I found it?  You reckon that it came off in Ray’s car and that after he killed her he happened on it in the dark and threw it out the window just a hundred yards away from where he’d done the deed?”

Lyle let what Logan had said sink in.  “So if you were on this case, officially, you’d be looking for someone in the Creek who’d been heading back to town when the crime was committed?”

“I
will
be looking for him, unofficially, Sheriff Bumgarner.  And off the subject, are you by any chance a relation of Jim’s?”

Lyle frowned.  “Jim who?”

“Jim Garner.  The old actor that played Rockford in the seventies.  His real name was Bumgarner.”

Lyle tried to kill a smile.  “I had an aunt that said I was a distant relation of his.  She had photos and press cuttings of Garner from when he played Bret Maverick, way back.  So maybe there’s some truth in it.”

They had another coffee.  There was some sort of mutual respect and bonding beginning to take shape between the two men.  Lyle told Logan to back off and leave it to him and his department, and said that under advice he may bail Ray on the drug charge, and would not – as yet – be charging him with the murder of Tanya Foster.  Logan had put up enough doubt to convince Lyle to look at alternatives.

Logan went back across the street and up to Kate’s office.  He had no idea that Tanya’s killer was watching him every step of the way.

CHAPTER SIX

He
was a worried man.  Due to the interference of the stranger in town, the sheriff was now looking beyond the obvious and broadening his lines of inquiry; no longer treating it as an open and shut case.

He went out back with his dog, Bama, and put every item of clothing he had worn that evening in an empty oil drum, added some gas from a two gallon can, and threw a lit cigarette in from eight feet away.  The initial combustion rocked the drum and a bright flame shot up almost invisibly into the air, due to it being midmorning.  Bama didn’t flinch.  And if given the word, the muscular Argentinean and Boerboel cross would have launched an attack on the blazing drum.  Fear was an emotion absent in the badass beast’s psyche.

Lighting another cigarette, he stood waiting to make sure that everything got burned to ash, which he planned on dumping in the lake that his property backed on to.  Better safe than sorry.  Going to prison was not on his list of things to do, ever.  And killing the bitch had been a complete accident.  All he was trying to do was shut her the fuck up.  One minute she had seemed compliant and agreeable to having sex; had even straddled him and was lowering herself onto his dick, before suddenly having a change of heart and going berserk.  But he was covered.  Had been wearing gloves, and taken the time to carefully redress her, making sure that the underwear was the right way round.  He had absolutely nothing to worry about, but would have been a lot happier if Ray Marshall had been charged.  And it was a given that Logan would still digging, even though the sheriff would have told him to back off.

After dumping the ashes into the lake, he sat on the porch of his chalet-style bungalow and let his thoughts retrace every minute that had elapsed on the night he’d first seen Tanya Foster walking along the highway.  No other vehicle had passed by, and before he had left the body to be found, he’d checked his pockets to make sure that he had not inadvertently dropped anything that would come back to haunt him.  He’d read about a rapist who’d been caught because his cell phone had fallen out of his pants’ pocket while he’d been committing the crime.  A good cleanup was the way to go.  He had even thrown the shoes he’d been wearing into the drum.  The only souvenir from the incident was a scratch under his left eye, which was not deep and would heal quickly.  And he was on sick leave with a slipped disc in his back that he made more of than need be, so could keep a low profile and stay away from the Creek.  Shit!  Maybe there was DNA under one of the girl’s fingernails.  All they needed was a microscopic amount of blood or tissue.  But there was no reason he could think of that he would be approached for a sample.  He would just have to ride it out.  When they exhausted all other avenues, Ray would take the fall, of that he was confident.

There was no progress with the case over the following three days.  Logan was all but certain that Ray would not be charged at any point with the murder of his girlfriend.  He was now restless, ready to move on, and had told Clifton that he would be checking out the following morning, which was a Saturday.

Being his last night in Carson Creek, he decided to go for a meal at the Wagon Wheel, which was a steakhouse four miles south of the motel.  It was a fine evening, and so rather than borrow Clifton’s pickup, he walked, taking pleasure in the exercise, and knowing that he could also enjoy a couple of beers.  The hour it took him to reach the place gave him an appetite, and an idea.

The Wagon Wheel was more upmarket than the average family diner.  It had a mellow ambience, and the lighting was set low, but not so low that you couldn’t see what you were eating.  A young guy was sitting on a stool playing Eagles type music on an acoustic guitar, and the sixteen-ounce steak with eggs over easy and home fried potatoes put Logan in a good frame of mind.  He drank a pot of coffee with the meal, and then went to the bar to have a draft beer.  The barkeep was a quiet type with a good head of silver hair, clean-shaven, and had a pleasant laidback manner.  The kind that you could lay your problems on without getting more than a few nods and an understanding expression in return.  He reminded Logan of the guy in an old TV show, who’d served Sinatra a drink and stood back quietly when Old Blue Eyes had sung that ultimate saloon song,
One for my baby, and one more for the road.

Midway along the bar were two guys talking about the recent murder, and how near the scene it was to the Wagon Wheel, via a dirt road that led east from just down the highway to the two-way that came out a little south of the Carver place.  Hearing that added weight to the idea that Logan had had earlier.

“You got CCTV around the place, Ned?”  Logan said after seeing the name tag pinned to the barkeep’s shirt.

“That question almost merits a beer on the house,”  Ned Williams replied.  “It scores nine out of ten for originality.  Makes me wonder if you’re a traveling salesman for some security company, or a guy planning to rob the place.”

Logan smiled.  “Neither.  I’m just wondering if you could furnish the sheriff with tapes if he requested them.”

Ned frowned.  “Who are you?”  he said.

“My name’s Logan.  I’ve been staying at Clifton Marshall’s motel for a couple of weeks.”

“And?”

“I’m looking out for his son, Ray.  He almost got charged with the murder of his girlfriend.”

“And you reckon he didn’t do it, Mr. Logan?”

“I know that he didn’t.  And it’s just Logan.”

“Maybe I have tapes, and maybe I don’t,”  Ned said.  “That would be something I’d discuss with the sheriff, should he ask me.”

“Fine, Ned.”

Not staying for another beer, Logan set off back to the Pinetop.  Thirty minutes and two miles later he shielded his eyes as a vehicle’s high beams appeared over a rise and blinded him.  He moved to the side of the highway to wait for it to pass, but it slowed and pulled onto the grass verge and parked.

Logan could just make out figures climbing out of what he thought was a large 4x4.  He jogged across the road to get an angle of sight without being dazzled.  There were three guys, and it appeared that they were all holding baseball bats.  He knew that one of them would be Carl Purvis.  Supposed that the other two were also deputies.  He would soon find out.

“Hi, Carl,”  Logan said as they slowly moved to within twenty feet of him.  “The ski mask suits you.  Are you going to introduce me to your buddies?”

Carl pulled off the woolen mask.  “You’re about to wish that you’d listened up and left town, Logan,”  he said.

Logan said nothing, just adjusted his weight and adopted a sideways on stance to them.

“There are three of us, Logan,”  Carl said.  “I’m surprised you don’t run for it like a spooked deer.”

“I can count, Carl,”  Logan said.  “I’m tired and need some shut-eye, so let’s get it on, so that I can be on my way.”

Carl took a few steps forward.  The other two kept their masks on and hung back.  They didn’t seem as enthusiastic as their self-appointed leader.

Logan exploded into action, taking all three of them by surprise.  They had thought he would try to talk himself out of the severe beating that Carl had planned on him receiving, or just make a dash for the woods, or maybe beg them not to hurt him.

They were wrong on all three counts.

His right leg shot out, and the side of his timberland boot connected full force with Carl’s left kneecap, displacing it and dropping him to the ground.  Two seconds later Logan was in possession of the bat that Carl had held.  He brought it down on the deputy’s right arm, fracturing the humerus above the elbow joint.  As Carl screamed in agony, Logan punched the end of the aluminum bat into the stomach of the one who had been standing to his left, doubling him over.  The third started swinging, but wasn’t focused and dropped like a stone as Logan ducked low and sideswiped him across the side of the skull.  The bat that the man had held flew from his hands and bounced with a metallic ring onto the asphalt.

Logan could be brutal if necessity called for it.  He used the bat another three times, to break some of the fingers of each mans’ right hand.

Going down on one knee next to Carl, Logan said, “Listen up real good, dummy.  If you come at me again, I’ll get pissed and put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.  Think hard about that while you’re healing up.”  He then went back to the other two in turn and pulled their masks off.  Didn’t recognize either of them.  “Who are you?”  he asked the one that was conscious.

“Dale Purvis,”  he gasped as he clutched his stomach with his good hand.  “Carl’s brother.”

“And the other guy?”

“A friend.  Johnny Wheeler.”

Logan went back to Carl.  Searched him and took his cell out of a pocket of the sheepskin jacket he was wearing.  Ran through the list of numbers in it, found Lyle’s home number and pressed call.

“Lyle Bumgarner.”

“It’s Logan, Sheriff.”

“And?”

“Carl, his brother Dale and Johnny Wheeler just stopped me on the highway midway between town and the Wagon Wheel.  They had baseball bats and bad intentions.  I’m with them now.  Do you want me to hang around, or can I keep on walking back to the Pinetop?”

“Fuck!  Stay there, Logan.  I’m on my way.”

Lyle made a call and then set off.  Less than five minutes later he was parked in front of the 4x4 and walking up to where Logan was sitting at the side of the road with his arms wrapped round his knees and keeping his eyes on the three injured men.

Logan got to his feet and shrugged.  “You’re going to have to do something about this boy, Sheriff.  He’s beginning to get me pissed.  Every time we meet up he attacks me.”

Lyle saw the three baseball bats on the ground.  “You got anything to say?”  he said, addressing Carl.

“He broke my arm and fingers,”  Carl whined.

“There’s a unit on the way,”  Lyle said.  “You’re suspended from duty, Carl.  And I strongly advise you to keep your mouth shut for the time being, because if Logan decides to press charges, you’re in deep shit.”

“I’m happy for you to deal with this, Sheriff,”  Logan said.  “And if you don’t mind, I’ve had enough excitement for one evening and would like to make my way back to the motel and get some shuteye.”

Lyle watched as Logan strolled off up the road, angled into the darkness of the woods and vanished from sight.  Carl had brought the department into disrepute, and at very least was now unemployed.

Kate stopped at the side of the road a couple of hundred yards from the Pinetop Motel at ten a.m. on Saturday morning.  She needed to discuss some fine points of the still open case with Clifton and Ray.  She had decided that if the perpetrator was not apprehended, and soon, then the sheriff might reconsider his position and arrest Ray again.

Kate was thorough, took her work very seriously, and did all humanly possible to ensure that she covered everything and anything appertaining to whatever case she was working on.  She had graduated from the prestigious William and Mary College, worked summers for Cavendish and Palmer Associates, passed the bar exam and was offered a permanent post with the Chicago-based firm.  That had been back in two-thousand, before events seven years later had caused her to adjust her priorities and move to the back of beyond and start up in practice south of Denver, in Carson Creek.

The main reason she had taken the Marshall boy on as a client was because of her own personal experience.  She opened the car window next to her, lit a cigarette and let her thoughts return to a breezy autumn evening on a sidewalk in the Windy City.

Kate was just fifty feet from the steps leading up to the entrance door of her apartment building.  She was looking forward to a shower, a bite to eat, and maybe a glass or two of white wine before hitting the sack.  It had been a long and hectic week, and she was ready for a lazy weekend, with no definite plans to do anything in particular.

The attack was fast and overwhelming.  Three men appeared from the mouth of an alley.  One struck her in the temple with his fist, and the others grasped her around the waist and the neck.  Within five seconds she had been dragged into the darkness, taken with frightening ease from the street into a world of physical pain and psychological trauma.

They were full of anger.  Called her a ‘fucking whore’ and said she was going to die.  And as they kicked her in the head and body, and took it in turn to rape her, she fully believed that her time had come.

A dog walker heard the commotion and phoned the police as her dog barked. The rapists took flight, leaving Kate for dead, lying in bloody disarray at the side of a stinking overfull dumpster.  But thanks to the intervention of the passing stranger, Kate had survived and regained consciousness thirty-six hours later.  Her jaw had been broken, and she had also suffered concussion, a ruptured spleen, several fractured ribs and a mass of deep bruising.  Her injuries healed, but her mental state remained fragile.  The incident left emotional scars as indelible as tattoos.  Fear, anger, and a mistrust of men took center stage in her mind.  From being outgoing and embracing the hustle and bustle of city life, she became insular and found it all but impossible for several weeks to leave the confines of her apartment.

Three months later she was offered a settlement from the firm on medical grounds, and a short time thereafter looked at a road atlas and decided that Colorado was as good a place as any to metaphorically reinvent herself and begin a new chapter in her life.  She knew that she would never live in a large city again.  They were in part dangerous warrens, peopled by many lowlifes’ that had no respect for any other person.  They took what they wanted, be it life, sex or property, with no compunction.

Dispelling the past, Kate closed the window; put the car in drive and seconds later was parking in front of the Marshall household.

This case meant a lot to her.  She fully believed that Ray was innocent, and that an as yet unidentified killer was walking free, and probably lived in town. 
Her
attackers had never been found.  She fervently hoped that this one would be.