The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [103]
Bodecker watched the deputies cross the ditch and start moving slowly through the cornfield, the backs of their shirts dark with sweat. He heard a car coming, turned and saw Howser start walking up the road to meet the coroner. “Goddamn it, girl, what the hell were you doing out here?” he said to Sandy. Reaching across the seat, he hurriedly removed a couple of keys hanging on the same metal ring as the ignition key, put them in his shirt pocket. He heard Howser and the coroner behind him. The doctor stopped when he got close enough to see Sandy in the front seat. “Good Lord,” he said.
“I don’t think the Lord’s got anything to do with this, Benny,” Bodecker said. He looked over at the deputy. “Get Willis out here to help you dust for prints before we move the car. Go over that backseat real close.”
“What you figure happened?” the coroner asked. He set his black bag on the hood of the car.
“The way it looks to me, Carl got shot by somebody sitting in the back. Then Sandy managed to get one round off with that .22, but, hell, she didn’t have a chance. That fucking thing’s loaded with blanks. And I think, judging from the place where the bullet came out her, whoever shot her was standing up by that time.” He pointed at the ground a few feet from the back door. “Probably right here.”
“Blanks?” the coroner said.
Bodecker ignored him. “How long you figure they been dead?”
The coroner got down on one knee and raised Carl’s arm up, tried to move it around a little, pressed on the mottled blue and gray skin with his fingers. “Oh, yesterday evening, I’d say. Thereabouts, anyway.”
They all stood looking at Sandy silently for a minute or so, then Bodecker turned to the coroner. “You make sure she gets took good care of, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Benny said.
“Have Webster’s pick her up when you’re done. Tell ’em I’ll be over later to talk about the arrangements. I’m gonna head back to the office.”
“What about the other one?” Benny asked, as Bodecker started to walk away.
The sheriff stopped and spit on the ground, looked over at the fat man. “However you got to work it, Benny, you make sure that one gets a pauper’s grave. No marker, no name, no nothing.”
50
“LEE,” THE DISPATCHER SAID. “Had a call from a Sheriff Thompson in Lewisburg, West Virginia. He wants you to call him back soon as possible.” He handed Bodecker a piece of paper with a number scrawled on it.
“Willis, is that a five or a six?”
The dispatcher looked at the paper. “No, that’s a nine.”
Bodecker shut the door of his office and sat down, opened a desk drawer, and took out a piece of hard candy. After seeing Sandy dead, the first thing he had thought about was a glass of whiskey. He stuck the candy in his mouth and dialed the number. “Sheriff Thompson? This is Lee Bodecker up in Ohio.”
“Thanks for calling me back, Sheriff,” the man said with a hillbilly drawl. “How you all doing up there?”
“I ain’t bragging.”
“The reason I called, well, it might not be nothing, but someone shot a man down here yesterday morning sometime, a preacher, and the boy we suspect might have been in on it used to live up in your parts.”
“That right? How did he kill this man?”
“Shot him in the head while he was sitting in his car. Held the gun right up to the back of his skull. Made a hell of a mess, but at least he didn’t suffer none.”
“What kind of gun did he use?”
“Pistol, probably a Luger, one of them German guns. The boy was known to have one. His daddy brought it back from the war.”
“That’s a nine millimeter, ain’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you say his name is?”
“Didn’t say, but the boy’s name is Arvin Russell. Middle name’s Eugene. His parents both died up around there the way I understand it. I think his daddy might have killed himself. He’s been living with his grandmother down here in Coal Creek for maybe the past seven, eight years.”
Bodecker frowned, stared across the room at the posters and flyers tacked on the wall. Russell. Russell? How did he