Dead Aim by Joe R. Lansdale
I eased around and took a better look. The back door was a sliding glass door. It was open. I went over there on tippy-toes and looked inside. Dark in there. I moved away from the door and leaned against the wall and thought things over. The smart thing was to call Leonard. Or go away. Those were good choices and safe.
Me and my gun and Agnes went inside.
***
It was dark and I couldn’t see, and I figured if anyone was still in the house, they’d have had time to adjust to the dark. They would be able to see fine. They’d be able to shoot fine.
I leaned against a wall and thought that any moment there would be a shot I wouldn’t hear, and it would be all over.
Around the corner from where I leaned was a hallway. There was a break to the left. There was some light in there, but it was the outside light. It was darker in the house than outside.
I moved from my spot, inching carefully into the room beyond the hall. It was a kitchen. A nice kitchen with a nice table and chairs and a coffee pot I could see on the counter, and leaning over the sink, his elbows in it, his knees on the floor, was our big guy Henry.
I said, “Henry?”
Henry didn’t call back.
I went over easy, and a little wide. There was a light switch on the wall next to the sink. I used the back of my wrist to flip it on. The top of Henry’s head was up against the window sill. He must have been looking out the window when it happened. Maybe at me and my car up there at the parking spot; he might have had my number early on, standing there in the dark seeing what I was doing while someone was coming in to see what he was doing. Someone with a gun. There were brains and blood on the wall and a little on the window, and a lot of it had run down into the sink; most of it had gone down the drain, but as the blood pumped slower, it had started to go thick. He was still big, but that didn’t matter much now. You don’t get too big for a bullet, if it’s placed right.
I didn’t shake him to see if he would come around.
I leaned Agnes against the wall, got out my phone and called Leonard.
“Yeah,” Leonard said.
“You know that big guy?”
“Uh huh,” he said. “Henry.”
“We are not going to have to fight him. We are not going to have to deal with him.”
Leonard was silent for a moment. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Not for him it isn’t.”
“You hurt him?”
“No.”
“Killed him?”
“No. But someone did.”
“Shit,” Leonard said. “You sure he’s dead?”
“Oh, yeah. The splattered brains gave him away.”
Lights jumped around outside the window. I took a look. Cop cars.
“My turn to say shit,” I said.
“What?” Leonard said.
“I think our donkey is in a ditch.”
***
The Chief of Police said, “I see you so much, maybe we ought to have a chair put in, something with your name on it, like those movie directors have.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “Maybe with a built-in drink holder.”
We had gotten off the subject, but we had sure been on it a lot for the last hour or so. My butt was tired and I had answered the same question so much it was starting to sound new when I heard it. I was starting to think maybe I should make up new answers. The truth wasn’t working.
“Why don’t you kind of run over things again,” the chief said.
“So you can see if I slip up?”
“That’s the idea, yeah.”
“I might ought to call for a lawyer.”
“You asking for that?” the chief said.
“No, I’m just thinking about it. But, without a lawyer I’m going to say it one more time. I didn’t kill him.”
“You had a gun on you.”
“Weak ploy, Chief. Wrong caliber.”
“You can’t know that,” the chief said.
“I’ve seen what a gun like mine can do. It would have made a bigger mess.”
“Maybe you had another gun.”
“Sure. Two gun Hap. What did I do with the other one, hide it up the big guy’s ass?”
“We can take a look.”
“Go right ahead. There’s no one going to stop you. Least of all, Henry. You can prowl around in there all day. Bring the kids.”
“All right,” the chief said. “I don’t think you did it.”
“That’s nice of you,” I said.
“Least not by yourself,” he said. “I’m thinking there was you and your partner, Leonard, and he got away. Quick out the back door.”
“That’s a shitty theory,” I said. “He was with Sharon Devon, being a bodyguard.”
I had told him all of this, but he liked to pretend we had never discussed it. It’s how we danced. I figured Leonard was in another room with someone else, being interrogated same as me.
“So, what’s your theory?” he asked.
“My theory is I was there to make sure he didn’t bother his soon to be ex-wife.”
“And how were you to do this?”
Now we were getting into new territory. “Idea was to keep an eye on him.”
“And if he went to see his wife with bad intent?”
“I was supposed to dissuade him.”
“And, how pray tell were you supposed to do that?” the chief asked.
“I was going to reason with him. Really, man. We been all over this so many times you could tell me my story.”
“Reason with him, huh,” he said. “I got to keep coming back to the part about you were in his house and he was dead and you had a gun and an axe handle.”
“Sometimes reason requires visual aids,” I said.
“Just wrap it up a little,” he said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head. “Tell me the good part, about how you went in the house and found him like that. Tell me why you went in again.”
I sighed. “I was watching the house. I heard a shot. I went down there and went in the back way. The door was open. Henry was hanging on the sink. I think he knew I was following him. Not at that moment. He didn’t know anything right then. But before that I think he knew. He made me.”
“A clever boy like you?” the chief said.
“Even squirrels fall out of trees. But maybe he was looking up the hill at me in my car. Someone was in the house. They may have come in the back way. The door was open. They snuck up on him.”
“That could be Leonard,” the chief said.
“But it wasn’t,” I said.
“You might not have found the door open,” he said. “You might have broke in to kill him. The lock had been worked. We could tell from the scratches. A lock kit. You could have come in using that.”
“Did you find a lock kit on me?”
“Maybe you stashed it somewhere with the other gun, the one you used to shoot Henry.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I stuck them both down the commode, along with my spare Range Rover and flushed them.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t seem so likely,” he said. “I think all those things together might cause a clog. I mean, you know, after the Range Rover.”
“What was I saying?”
“You heard a shot.”
“So, someone slipped in and shot Henry. I heard the shot. I went down there. When I did, whoever killed him saw me. I figure they were in that patch of woods behind the house. They called the cops. It put you on me and off of them, whoever them is.”
“The one with the lock pick kit and the right caliber gun?” he said.
“That would be him or her, yes.”
“You want a candy bar?”
“What?” I said.
“Candy bar,” he said. “I got a couple in the drawer.”
“Really?”
He opened his desk drawer and took out two Paydays and put them on the desk. “Go ahead,” he said.
I took one and peeled the wrapper off and p
“It’s free,” he said.
“That’s true,” I said, and took a bite. When I finished chewing, I said, “You don’t think I did this, do you? I mean you said you didn’t, but really, do you?”
“No, but you’re the kind of guy who could do it,” he said.
“Shoot him in the back of the head?”
“I think you’d do it anyway you could get it done,” he said. “I planned to shoot a guy big as Henry, I’d have shot him in the back of the head. You know, these are pretty good.”
“Yeah,” I said, and ate the rest of mine.
The chief eased out his breath. “No. I don’t think you did it, but it’s my job to ask, and I can’t treat you any different from anyone else.”
“And if you act like you’re really on my side, give me a candy bar and all, I’ll slip up and tell you something that will hang me.”
“It’s the sort of thing that’s happened,” he said.
“But not to me,” I said.
“So it’s not working?”
“Nope.”
“You can go,” he said. “But, we might come back around to this again. Same questions. Maybe some new ones to go with it. Could be your answers will change.”
“Just restock on candy bars,” I said.
I got up and went out.
***
Leonard came to the house about an hour later. When he came in I poured him a cup of coffee and put it on the table along with a bag of vanilla cookies.
“I had a candy bar,” I said. “Did you?”
“No… They gave you a candy bar?” he said.
“Yep. It’s my charm.”
“What kind of shit is that?” he said. “They didn’t offer me a candy bar. They didn’t offer me a fucking stick of gum.”
“Did you talk to the chief?”
Leonard shook his head. “I talked to a major asshole who was about five-four and wanted to be six-six, and wished twelve inches of that would be dick. Tell you another thing, I saw Sharon there when I came in, and she looked at me like I had crapped a turd on the tile.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. And the guy grilling me, he said she rolled over on us.”
“They lie like that to get you to give things up,” I said.
“I know that, Hap. You think I don’t know that?”
“I know you know that,” I said. “I’m just saying.”
“What I’m telling you though, I saw her there in the hall, and I got the vibes.”
“Tell me about the vibes,” I said.
“I think we been butt fucked vibes, that’s what they were.”
“Define butt fucked.”
“She had you go over there to watch the guy, and then she had someone go over there and pop him, and guess who takes the rap?”
“They’re going to have a hard time proving I shot him with the wrong gun and hit him with an axe handle when I didn’t.”
“They think she hired you and me to pop him,” Leonard said. “That’s how it looks, so to help herself out, to make them not think that, she’s got to paint us like we went rogue on the deal. Just decided it was easier to lay him down than to follow him around. She may have had it planned that way all along.”
“It could be like that,” I said. “Though you were at her house.”
“But that doesn’t do you any good, and she could still make me part of the plan. Say I wasn’t there. I could get the rap as the actual shooter.”
“She sure seems to be tossing us on the track in front of a train quick-like,” I said. “Quick enough you got to wonder.”
“Yep… Where’s Brett?”
“She picked up a shift for a friend… So what do we do now?”
“I suggest,” Leonard said, “we don’t let ourselves get screwed any more than we already have. That’s what I suggest.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“I ask questions, as wise men do. I do not provide the answers.”
“So, you think I’ll come up with something?” I said.
“Probably not,” he said. “Why I asked where Brett was.”
***
At Marvin’s office I sat in the chair in front of the desk and Leonard sat on a stool by the counter with the coffee. He had the bag of vanilla wafers with him. He had not offered me or Marvin any, and I was the one who bought them for him. He was sipping a cup of Marvin’s bad coffee and eating the wafers. He would put one in his mouth and close his eyes and look as satisfied as a lion with a gazelle in its stomach. If he had had a Dr Pepper, his favorite drink, he would have floated to the ceiling and farted vanilla.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Marvin said, after I explained it to him. “You know what’s worse? She never paid her bill.”
“That is the least of our worries,” I said.
“It’s high on my list,” he said. “Hey, I didn’t ask you guys to kill him. I just wanted you to do right, get me paid so I could dole out a few bucks to you two. That way, I would have enough for a house payment.”
“Funny,” I said. “Leonard, think you might want to get in on this? Considering we might go to prison or get a needle in the arm for something we didn’t do?”
“I wasn’t in the house,” Leonard said. “I think I can turn on you and get a lighter sentence.”
“And me,” Marvin said, “I’m in pretty good shape. I just hired you guys to do a simple observation job. What the lady wanted. And the two of you went crazy. You went in there and shot him with an axe handle, Hap.”
“Nice,” I said.
“Look here,” Marvin said. “Let’s figure this thing. Jim Bob knows the lady, so maybe we start with him.”
“Nobody knows where he is,” I said. “I tried him on the phone before we came here. He’s not answering for whatever reason. For now, he’s out.”
“Then we got to think about what it was we were asked to do. Lady comes in and says she has a recommendation, and it’s from one our best buddies, Jim Bob. She says she needs someone to protect her. To discourage someone. We take the job. You guys go over there and talk to her and hear her story and meet her lawyer. How am I doing so far?”
“Good,” I said.
“She tells you her husband is big, and it turns out he is. She tells you he is scary and he beat up a boyfriend, a date, whatever. But the guy that got whipped won’t press charges. Course, really, he doesn’t need to. The cops can go after Henry anyway, if they want. But they think: all right, guy got a beating, wouldn’t stand up for himself, so why should we bother? Kind of a Texas thing going there.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Shit, Leonard. Would you at least not smack?”
“Sorry,” Leonard said.
“But whatever, they know he’s going to be a shitty witness. Maybe he’ll say he fell down a few times and got banged up because he wants to keep his Man Ticket. Won’t admit he got a licking. By the way, this guy that took a beating. Who is he?”
I looked at Leonard.
Leonard said, “I don’t know.”
“Nor do I,” I said.
“You know what?” Marvin said. “I think this guy, whoever he is, would be a nice place to start. I think anyone with detective skills would have already thought of that.”
“We’ve been a little preoccupied,” I said.
“And you have limited detective skills,” Marvin said.
“Well, yeah, there’s that,” I said.
“Let me show you some detective work,” Marvin said.
He called his friend on the force. The one that knew the guy’s name. He wrote down the name and gave it to us.
Robert Unslerod.
***
Unslerod lived out in the country in a trailer. That was surprising. Not the kind of man Sharon Devon would date. Least I didn’t think so. She struck me as someone who liked money, a man who wore a tie and took her to good dinners and when he dropped trousers he’d be wearing sil
We knocked on the trailer door, but no one answered. Maybe Unslerod was actually taking a spin in his Porsche and this is just where he came to store his garbage. When he didn’t answer, I got a pad and pen out of my pocket and pressed it against the door to write a note.
The door swung open a little. A smell came out of there that was, to put it mildly, unpleasant.
“Not good, sir,” Leonard said.
“Nope.”
We went back to the car and stood by it.
“Call the cops?” I said.
“Might just be a dead raccoon under the trailer,” Leonard said.
“That stink is from inside the trailer,” I said.
“Might be a dead kitty cat inside,” Leonard said. “Maybe he went off for the week and forgot to leave Fluffy his kitty food and water dispenser.”
“And maybe that’s not it at all,” I said.
“Yeah, well, probably not,” Leonard said, opened the car door and got my revolver out of the glove box and held it by his side. “You get the axe handle.”
I got the axe handle. We went back to the trailer and I nudged the door with the toe of my old Tony Lama’s. It slid back. I stuck my head around the corner. It was dark in there. The stink was terrible; worse when we got completely inside.
There was a pile in the hallway between the living room and the bedroom, near the open bathroom door. It didn’t look like a lump in the rug. It was too big to be a cat.
“Shit,” I said.
We went over and looked. It was a man, face down. The floor under him was dark, like a hole had opened up there. He was only wearing dark boxer shorts; my guess was they were not silk. We couldn’t tell too much about him there in the dark, but what we could tell was that he wasn’t just having a little nap.