Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [14]
“You didn’t say anything about walking.”
Having come this far, I knew it would be a waste of breath to refuse, and I was going to need all the breath I had for the hike. We trudged up the hill.
“James Coyote had a Ford four-by pick-up with a canopy. They had no trouble getting up here, even though it was raining that night and the road was all muddy. Lots of kids used to run their four-by’s up here during the daylight, and at night it was a good place to bring a girl.”
“You came up here last night with the chief?”
“Yeah, I told you. He’s an interesting guy. That picture on the bulletin board, all these years, even though it’s a cold case? He was only twelve when it happened. But he knows there’s a killer going free, maybe still on this island, and still eats at him.”
“And at you, apparently.”
“It’s got to me. I admit it. When we walked up to this rise last night, the chief and me, I started getting all roiling inside.”
“I know what that’s like.”
The road rose into the woods and dropped into a clearing that over the years had been worn into a kind of four-by track, up and down hillocks, dangerous angles and curves, deep mud traps. Where it went up it offered a nice view of the water, Point Despair, one of the many cheerfully named points of land in the Northwest. Point Deception, Point No Point, Point Doom…
“This is where they parked,” he said, showing me a lane that ended just inside the edge of the woods. “Jimmy backed in so that they were facing the water, even though there wasn’t much to see that night because of the rain. They were alone, off in their own world, necking, touching each other, talking about their dreams.”
“Did they have the radio on?” I was making a lame joke, adding one more impossible to know detail to his imaginary scene.
“No,” he answered. “The radio was broken when Jimmy bought the truck and he never had the money to replace it.”
“How do you know that?”
“The chief told me.”
“Did he tell you they were talking about their dreams?”
“How could he know that?”
“How could you, buddy?”
“Isn’t that what any young couple would talk about?”
“You were up here all night?”
“Half the night. There wasn’t that much left to it.”
“With Chief Shining Pony?”
“He’s haunted. Comes here often. And he was only twelve when it happened. He kind of liked having the company and someone to talk to about it. You aren’t interested?”
“Murder is always a little interesting, Odd, ‘cause we’re the only animals that practice it and study it…and seem to enjoy it. That’s the mystery to me, not who did what to who.”
“Is it because we’re made in God’s image? Do we get it from Him?”
“Hmmm….Man’s disposition toward murder is genetic, passed down from his Heavenly Father…that’ll get you kicked out of any Lutheran church in the land, Odd.”
He was standing where the driver’s window might have been that night.
“They were shot from here,” he said, “twelve gauge shotgun. First Jimmy, one shot to the head.”
“The chief told you that? That the boy was shot first?”
“There were bruises on his right arm, where Jeannie had clutched him while they talked to the killer.”
“They talked to the killer?”
“The window was rolled down. Why would the window be rolled down? It was pouring rain. Unless they rolled it down to talk to the killer? Which doesn’t necessarily mean they knew him. They were polite kids. Still, with a population of only a thousand, odds are they did know him. Anyway, it wasn’t a friendly coversation. She was gripping his arm. The killer shot Jimmy….then…Jeannie…then…he picked up the spent shells. Which is cold…methodical. Who could be so cold?”
Odd’s eyes were focused on the interior of that imaginary Ford four-by, but mine were all over him, watching him play this out. I had never attributed a great imagination to Odd, but why would I? He was like me. He did his job, he went home.
“Over in that direction lives—or used to live, he’s dead now—an old bachelor strawberry farmer. You can’t drive there from