“Whaddaya got there?” Loushine asked, rushing to my side— anything to quit searching through Thilgen’s unsavory life. He watched over my shoulder as I examined the contents of the box, paying particular attention to the checks written most recently.
“This is interesting,” I said at last.
“What?”
“Nearly every check Thilgen wrote paid for monthly bills or purchases—groceries, gasoline, utilities, that sort of thing—except for these six that were made out to James Johannson.”
“Jimmy Johannson is an asshole,” Loushine told me. “An asshole with a record.”
“Yes, I know,” I recalled. “We met.” I studied the check amounts. “Five checks were written for five hundred dollars each over the past nine months except for this last one.” I gave Loushine a look at the carbon in the checkbook register. It was for twenty-five hundred, and it was made out the day the Buick was stolen from the Wascott fire chief.
“The day before Michael was shot,” Loushine noted.
“Uh-huh.”
“Let’s go,” the deputy said excitedly.
“Go where?” I asked.
“Go and brace Johannson, whaddaya think? Bring him in for questioning.”
“On what grounds?” I asked.
“On what—?”
“What probable cause are you going to give the judge when he asks?”
Loushine gave it two beats then began to curse bitterly.
“Dammit, Taylor. You’ve compromised the investigation.”
“Would I do a thing like that?”
“We can’t use any of this shit now,” Loushine told me as I returned the check registers to the box.
“Unlawful entry … proceeds of an illegal search … fruits of the poisonous tree …” Loushine went on like that while I took the box back to Thilgen’s bedroom. He was just finishing up when I returned.
“Is this how you do things in St. Paul?” he asked.
“Of course not,” I told him. “It’s illegal.” I smiled—and inwardly shuddered—at the thought of what Anne Scalasi would do to me if I attempted the same nonsense in her town.
“So now what do we do?” Loushine asked.
“So now I go talk with James Johannson. Alone.”
Deputy Loushine cursed some more.
twenty-one
Deputy Loushine’s directions—or my misunderstanding of them—got me all turned around. I ended up at a service station off the county road, absolutely lost. The kid manning the pumps regarded me suspiciously, and when I asked him for directions to Johnny Johannson’s place, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”
“So I can talk to the man. Is that a problem?”
“Let’s just say it’s a small county, and it’s getting smaller all the time, and I have to live in it, and I don’t want to do anything that will make living in it harder than it already is.”
“I just want to talk.”
“There’s a phone inside.”
“Swell.”
And people say I’m cynical.
A phone book was attached to the telephone stand with a chain in case someone wanted to steal it. It listed John Johannson’s address as 315 Fire Road 21. Next to the unmanned cash register was a rack filled with maps going for a buck-fifty each. I stole one labeled Kreel County and took it back to my car.
No fewer than five wrecks littered Johnny Johannson’s yard, the hood of each car opened to the elements. Most of the cars were rusted through, dead but unburied. I parked in the driveway next to them, thinking that my ’91 Dodge Colt fit right in.
The house itself—an ancient ramshackle two-story in need of paint and a new roof—was situated at the end of a dirt road in a weed-infested clearing surrounded by a wall of trees. There was no lake that I could see, only woods. I followed a worn dirt path to the front of the house and knocked on the door. Johnny Johannson answered it. He clenched his fists and went into a defensive stance at the sight of me. It had been weeks since he had seen me last, yet he still wanted to know, “You lookin’ for more?”
“Not me, sir,” I told him. “I figured I got off lucky the first time.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’d like to speak with your son, James, if I might?”
“What for?” still on the defensive.
I showed him my photostat.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Guy named Chip Thilgen. I was told James might know where I can find him.”
“James isn’t in trouble?” Johannson asked.
“Not that I know of.” I shrugged, acting oh-so-innocent. “Not with me, anyway.”
“That’s good, that’s good, ’cuz Jimmy, he’s had his share—if you know what I mean.”
I pretended that I didn’t.
“Is he around?” I asked.
“Well, now, I can’t say that he is,” Johannson replied. “He’s out”—Johannson gestured toward the trees surrounding his home—“workin’ his new dog. But I expect he’ll be back anytime now if you care to wait.”
I said I would and followed him inside.
Johannson offered me a cold beer, which I accepted, and led me to his workroom in the basement.
“You had me, you know,” he said as we descended the stairs. “Back at The Last Chance, you had me. With them moves of yours, you coulda killed me easy. A lot of them assholes be happy to see it, too.”
“Why didn’t you just stay down?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t give ’em the satisfaction.”
I watched in true awe as Johnny Johannson gave me a tour of his workbench. He was a flytier like my grandfather, and he had all his paraphernalia meticulously arranged—in direct contrast to the rest of his home. The benchtop looked like a surgical tray, filled with a scalpel, scissors, pliers, tweezers, a dubbing needle, a magnifying glass, single-edge razor blades, an emery board, an Arkansas point file, and an eyedropper. Three different-sized transparent plastic boxes labeled THREAD, FLOSS, and TINSEL were neatly stacked atop each other. Fixed to the wall above the bench was a large shadowbox with over two dozen compartments, the compartments filled with jars and paper bags, each labeled for capes, fur, hair, hackles, hooks, and so on. An English vise was mounted to the bench. It was exactly like my grandfather’s, and I told Johannson so.
“This is so cool,” I said aloud, and he smiled.
“Whaddaya think of this?” he asked after opening a large wooden box lined with foam and containing about fifty wet flies. He placed one of the flies in my palm.
“Very nice,” I said.
“What is it?” he asked, testing me.
I studied it carefully, examining the fly the way Granddad had taught me. The fly had a black wool body shrouded in deer hair and a fluffy turkey feather dyed black; the wing was extended about an inch beyond the shank, that straight part of the hook between the bend and the eye.
“I’d guess a black marabou muddler, except—”
“Except?”
“The hackle is dyed bright yellow instead of scarlet.”
“So?”
“Shouldn’t the tail be scarlet?”
“I don’t know, should it?”
“It’s how my grandfather tied them.”
“Your grandfather still with us?”
“Eighty-six and going strong.”
“Keep the fly.”
“Thanks.”
“Give it to your granddad, and tell ’im he should experiment some.”
I smiled my sincere thanks. Johannson showed me more, demonstrating with surprisingly nimble fingers the proper preparation of deer tails; advising me how to select the correct thread for winding the hair. I’d been down there for nearly an hour when we heard three muffled shotgun blasts in quick succession.