“And you’re getting at what here?”
“I’m getting at the fact that we quietly withdraw your brother’s complaint—”
“No way.”
“I didn’t interrupt you. Please don’t interrupt me.”
“You didn’t interrupt me,” Amy said, “because you’ve been doing all the talking. Bob, I’m busier than hell. Will you get to the point?”
“What if my client agrees to pick up Richie’s medical bills, which I believe amount to something like twelve hundred dollars? That’s a lot of money for Richie to come up with.”
About that, she couldn’t argue. She’d already gotten two calls from one of the nuns at the hospital asking if she could please mention discreetly to Richie that his bill was now ninety days old. “If he can’t pay the whole thing, Amy, could you ask him to call us and we’ll set up some sort of pay schedule.” Richie didn’t have any insurance.
“I can see interest in your eye,” Medlow said brightly. “You’re starting to see things my way. Your aura is changing colors, too. That’s a very good sign.”
“My aura? I’m surprised you don’t wear a mood ring and ask me what my astrological sign is.”
“I already know. Pisces. I figured that out last year at your birthday party at the bar association.”
She sighed and sat back.
“You’re probably right,” she said. “Probably neither one of them is telling the exact truth. They’re both hotheads, so they both probably played a role in getting the fight started.”
“There you go.”
“But.”
He smiled. “Here we go.”
“But if we drop the charges, Arnette is going to think he can keep right on doing what he’s doing. And nobody’s going to stop him.”
“This one scared him, Amy.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“Your friend Sam took him out behind the jail one night after they’d both had more than their share of the hard stuff — and beat, you should pardon my French, the living shit out of my client Arnette.”
“You’re kidding? What brought that on?”
“Seems your man friend and the Chief almost came to blows themselves. I guess Sam has always felt that Arnette is a bad cop and should be fired. He was extra pissed about this particular dustup because it came between you and him. So I guess one night Arnette and Haymes were in the back of the station and Arnette was bragging about how he’d beaten the crap out of this homeless guy — and Sam just lost it. Sam’s a by-the-book lawman.”
“He sure is.”
She wanted to call Sam and tell him thanks for his faith in Richie, even if Sam hadn’t been able to tell her.
“Sam told me that he figured that both Arnette and Richie played a part,” Medlow said. “But that Arnette way overreacted. And used his nightstick on your brother — who was unarmed.”
“I wish he would have told me all this.”
Medlow shook his head. “He couldn’t. We’re talking the thin blue line here. Sam had to stick up for his department, even if that meant defending a prick like Arnette.”
She laughed. “A prick? I wish I had that on tape.”
“As you well know, Counselor, we can’t be crazy about every single client we have.”
“He’s a psycho.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid he is. But my job is to get you to drop the matter.”
“I can’t make that decision.”
“Oh?”
“It’ll be up to Richie.”
“You can urge him to do it.”
“That I can do.”
“Will you?”
She thought a moment and then said, “Yeah, yeah I will. Because he needs the money more than he needs a victory in court. But you’ve got to promise me one thing.”
“If I can.”
“You have a talk with the Chief. You tell him what a shit that Arnette is.”
“Deal.”
He reached across the desk and they shook hands.
She really did like Medlow, and he actually was kind of cute.
She said, “Now get the hell out of here.”
He grinned. “Yes’m, boss lady.”
5
Two hunters found the body.
The duck season had opened the previous weekend, and any section of timber that wasn’t posted became a hunting ground.
The covering of leaves was what first startled the men. Furious flies buzzed around the mound of leaves. Several crows perched nearby, obviously studying the flies carefully. There might be food involved here. They had eaten earlier when a squirrel had been struck and killed by a truck hauling steel rods to Dubuque. But the thing concealed beneath the leaves promised to be an even better meal.
The crows watched the furious black flies in the sunny autumn morning.
As the first hunter later told police, he knew immediately that the shape beneath the leaves was that of a human being. Just couldn’t be anything else.
Both hunters had seen enough TV to know that they shouldn’t touch or move anything at the crime scene.
One of the hunters knelt down next to the body and parted a few crinkly yellow leaves.
He saw one dead blue eye staring up at him. The eye belonged to a white girl. Other than that, he couldn’t tell anything else about her.
The discovery hit both men pretty hard. They both had teenage daughters of their own.
Several years ago in Crystal Falls, an escaped convict had stalked a fourteen-year-old girl through the woods, beaten and raped her, and then put a double-barreled shotgun up her and pulled both triggers.
The people of the town had never forgotten this and never would.
One of the hunters went down the hill to the cottage belonging to Richie McGuire.
The hunter could see McGuire sleeping in there, but no matter how hard he pounded, the hunter couldn’t raise Richie.
He finally tried the doorknob, but the place was locked.
Richie was still sprawled across his bed, asleep.
The hunter knew Richie. Most everybody did. Richie was obviously sleeping off a particularly bad drunk.
At the time, the hunter later told police, he didn’t make any connection between Richie and the dead girl.
The second hunter went back up the hill. He thought that this was a hell of a day to be dead. Iowa didn’t get much prettier than during an Indian summer like this, the leaves burning brown and yellow and russet red and burnished gold; the blue sky vibrant with arcing hawks and pheasants; the air itself melancholy with the smoky smell of the surrounding hills where leaves were being burned; and the temperature a just-right seventy-six degrees.
It was a hell of a day to be dead, all right.
The second hunter guarded the body this time. The first hunter trooped back to the Bronco and drove down the hill to the nearest farmhouse.
By the time he got back to the body, the hunter found that several other hunters had appeared. A circle of men with shotguns stood in a semicircle around the corpse.
“I’ll bet I can tell you who it is,” one of them said.
“Who?” said the first hunter.
“Fuller’s daughter, that rich prick from New York.”
“Yeah?”
“His daughter.”
“What makes you think it’s her?” the first hunter said.
The man turned and gestured down the hill. “You know who lives there?”
“Sure. Richie McGuire.”
“Right. And guess who was seeing the McGuire girl.”
“Oh, bullshit. Richie wouldn’t be crazy enough to do that. That’s just gossip.”
“Is it?” the man said. “Guess you didn’t hear what happened over to Riley’s Pub last night.”
“I did,” another hunter said. “Chick came right into the tavern and accused Richie of knocking her up. And then Richie tried to strangle her.”