Thin Gray Lines Read online

  “Red blazer?” Corus asked.

  Nelka nodded. “Olive Tanner.”

  “Something crashed through the ceiling?”

  “Hard to say. Olive was there around eight am and didn’t see any foreign object.”

  “Well obviously she took it,” Pineda said. “Whatever it was.”

  “From the size of the hole this object made in the ceiling — not to mention the damage to old man Phillips and his closet — I don’t believe she could have taken anything. She’s a hundred and ten pounds, tops.”

  “Can we take a look?” Corus asked.

  “I’m off at five,” Nelka said. “We can swing over then.”

  FOURTEEN

  Joller walked into an optical center at the front of a CheapValue store and asked the attendant about having his eyes checked.

  “The vision test is $19.95 right now. On special.” She smiled.

  “Fine.”

  “You can wait over in the corner, and someone will be out to grab you shortly.”

  As he took his seat in the waiting corner, his phone rang. Pineda.

  “You have eyes on him?” Joller asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Do you know where he is, or not?”

  “He’s wandering around downtown. I told him I had a stomach ache and walked back to the hotel.”

  “Wait, what? You spoke with him?”

  “Yeah…” Pineda said long and slow. “So, uhh… What had happened was I was looking out for Jameson’s rig on I-90 and didn’t see nothing. I pull in to get gas, and Corus is there at the damn gas pump, looking at me.”

  “Jesus Christ, you stumbled right into him?”

  “It’s all good. I played it well. He thinks I was sent by Lieutenant Ruiz to keep an eye on him. Close enough to the truth. We drove down here together the rest of the way, but I drew the line at rooming together.”

  Joller gritted his teeth to avoid yelling but it wasn’t enough. He grabbed a magazine and rolled it up on his thigh, then squeezed it until all the veins in his arm popped out. “You incompetent, worthless dickhead. You—”

  A sharp intake of breath brought Joller’s attention to a middle-aged woman a few feet away. She sat beside a young boy with thick, blue-framed specs.

  Joller turned his back to them.

  “You ignorant, stupid dick.”

  “I did what you asked. Could say I have an excellent in right now. Wherever he goes, I can go.”

  Joller drove the end of the rolled-up magazine into his forehead. “Fine. Proceed. Now he’s out in the open. If you see an opportunity to make him suffer, take it. There will be a greater financial reward. I know how motivating that will be to you.”

  “Like, you want me to hurt him?”

  “Hit him when he won’t see it coming.”

  “I don’t think I follow.”

  “You do. You follow very well. If you don’t hurt him, you don’t get paid.”

  “Mister Jones?” The eye doctor waved Joller back.

  “Just get it done,” he growled and hung up.

  The eye doctor wore a white lab coat and had her red hair up in a loose bun. She led him back to a small exam room and asked, “How are you doing today?”

  “Something’s up with my vision.”

  “We can sure help with that.” She offered a hand toward a line of tape on the floor. “I’ll just have you step to the line and we’ll get started.”

  He toed the line, placed one hand over his left eye as ordered and read off lines of block letters. Then he switched to covering the right eye.

  “Read the third line for me?”

  “R… D… Maybe a G, no, D. F, T, Y?”

  “And now the fourth line?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too hard.”

  “Just do your best.”

  “G, M, L, P, E, F.”

  “Looks like your right eye is better than the left. Let’s have you sit down.”

  She swung the clunky eye testing device before his face. After many minutes of frustrating questions, she swung the instrument away and folded her hands on her lap.

  “Have you always had trouble seeing out of your left eye?”

  “Never. I have twenty-twenty vision.”

  “You have in your right eye. Your left eye is 20-200.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Are you on any medications?”

  “No.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “Any other substances?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m just trying to decipher what the issue is. A vision change this sudden is usually a medical issue.”

  “Aren’t you an eye doctor?”

  “I’m an optometrist. You need to see a medical doctor. They may refer you to a neurologist.”

  Joller walked out and through the lobby in a huff.

  “Excuse me, sir?” The attendant waved and pointed near his waist.

  Joller looked down. He still had the rolled-up magazine in his clenched fist. He dropped it on the linoleum and stormed out.

  FIFTEEN

  The sun was nearing the horizon as Nelka led the way out of Walla Walla proper. They traveled along a stretch of highway then onto a county road that gently rose and fell like slow rolling ocean swells. The road flattened out a bit on a lenticular rise that paralleled the curvature of the clear blue sky. They were only six hundred feet above sea level, but with the mountains in the distance, Corus felt like he was driving on top of the world.

  Bracketed by distant peaks, a cluster of agricultural buildings grew larger and more distinguishable as they approached. Nelka turned right, away from the large farm operation onto a country lane with six or seven houses visible before the horizon.

  The first house on the left was a quaint two-story with dilapidated wooden siding that had been freshly painted over with white.

  They parked and got out of their respective vehicles, and Nelka waved at a farm worker a way off who waved back and picked up something oblong from his field. It looked like a metal fence post with a concrete-filled coffee can at its base. He slung it over a shoulder and trudged back toward the larger farm’s buildings.

  “That’s Randall Pieterse. Works for the Tanner farm next door.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk to him?” Corus asked.

  “Let him go about his business.” Nelka adjusted his belt. “Real busy time of year.”

  Nelka let them in the front door and called inside, a routine formality. They stepped through the small foyer and took in the living room.

  “This guy was a neat freak,” Pineda said.

  “He was selling the place. Too old to run the farm anymore. This will be Olive Tanner’s work.”

  They toured the main floor, then mounted the stairs to the second floor which held two bedrooms.

  The occupant’s bed had been stripped bare of linens. Its wooden frame was badly broken near the headboard. Curiously, the mattress wasn’t stained red.

  “He died immediately on impact,” Corus said.

  “That’s right. He looked like a Picasso painting,” Nelka said.

  Corus gazed up at the hole in the roof and the blue sky above. It was about four-feet-long and two-and-a-half-feet-wide with bits of insulation and shingle and splintered wood hanging from the edges.

  “Careful. House this old is liable to have asbestos,” Nelka said.

  Corus stepped around the bed to the far closet whose door had been smashed in.

  “Looks like the object came to rest here,” Corus said.

  “Hard to say.”

  Corus drew a line with his fingers from the roof to the bed to the closet. Nelka looked on unimpressed.

  “Can’t say for sure the door wasn’t broken already. John Phillips was known to drink. Had a temper. Probably why he never got a woman to stick around.”

  “You think he made that hole in the roof too?”

  “No, I don’t, but I’ve seen crazier things.”
/>   “Something came through the roof and smashed him,” Pineda said. “You agree with that much, right?”

  “I can assume so, but what good is it to make a determination without evidence?”

  “What good is it?” Pineda scoffed. “It’s how you solve crimes. Do you not have crimes here?”

  Nelka stuck his thumbs in his belt. “We have crimes here. We just don’t traffic in sloppy guess work. The naked facts leave the cleanest trail to the answer.”

  “What do you suggest?” Corus asked.

  “We’ll ask around. The most reliable policing tool is the populace itself.”

  “You didn’t ask that farmer,” Pineda said. “He walked within a hundred feet of this place.”

  “Like I said, it’s a busy time of year. We’ll ask around when it’s convenient.”

  “Convenient?” Pineda scoffed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Hey,” Corus said.

  “We serve a farming community,” Nelka said. “If seed doesn’t get in the ground, then people don’t earn. If people don’t have livelihood, then what are we serving and protecting?”

  “I hear you,” Corus said. “I’m perfectly happy to learn how things are done here.”

  Pineda laughed. “Soft on crime. Lazy, fat ass cops, like usual.”

  Nelka flared his nostrils and squared up to Pineda who was taller. “You’re looking pretty soft, yourself, dough boy. Looking like you couldn’t run down a perp unless he was in a wheelchair missing one wheel.”

  “I can run just fine.”

  “Gentlemen,” Corus said. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

  Nelka wasn’t backing down. “Listen here, numb nuts. We solve our cases. And we do it without running ourselves ragged. You know why? Because healthy communities police themselves.”

  Pineda made a jerking off motion. “There’s a hole in this dead man’s roof, and you don’t wanna do anything about it.”

  Nelka bunched his mouth and found a calm and deliberate tone. “I only let you in here as a courtesy to Ruiz. Far as I’m concerned, that courtesy has been performed. We’re done here.”

  Nelka waved toward the door.

  Corus hit the stairs, cursing Pineda under his breath, and turned into the kitchen. He was out the back door before Nelka could see, scanning about in the filtered light of dusk.

  A long, rutted path in the side yard served as a driveway. A twenty-year-old truck was parked near an even older Buick sedan in the grass before a large shed. Another dirt driveway ran perpendicular from the doors of the shed out east without end. It was more of a road toward the Tanner farm. Corus inspected the tire tracks, some of which appeared fresh and hurried. He felt Nelka exit the house behind him, so he headed around to the vehicles without making eye contact, as if he’d merely taken a wrong turn.

  Corus and Pineda got in his SUV. Nelka stood near the window.

  “I’m gonna escort you two back to town. You will enjoy a burger and a beer, have a good night’s rest and head back to Seattle in the morning. We clear?”

  He patted the roof and walked to his car.

  Corus and Pineda exchanged looks.

  “What’s your fucking problem?” Pineda said.

  “Real nice.”

  “That man is incompetent.”

  That was rich coming from Pineda, but he couldn’t entirely disagree.

  “He did lack a sense of urgency, maybe because the victim was a loner. You’d think a family would have a bone to pick with his community policing philosophy.”

  “Fuck that guy,” Pineda said. “But I like that burger and beer idea.”

  “Nelka being slow on the draw doesn’t permit an outsider to be so rude, especially when he was doing us a favor. Now what are we going to do?”

  Corus followed Nelka to town, growing angrier at Pineda who sulked quietly. Corus would have to apologize in the morning and pray Nelka would see the importance of working together.

  SIXTEEN

  After they marched back up to their rooms, Pineda slammed his door behind him without a word of goodbye. Corus slipped down the stairs near the rear exit and walked back to the lobby, where he met a blonde teenaged girl with chubby cheeks and glasses.

  “Can I help you?”

  Corus rapped a knuckle softly on the counter. “Is there a VFW in town?”

  He fully expected her to be too young to know, but small town living prevailed. She directed him to a freestanding building so close to the Sheriff’s Department that Corus had to walk right past the entrance again to get to it.

  Half an hour later, he was picking at a basket of chicken tenders and fries at the bar of a dark lounge, lit only by neon signs, arcade games and tv screens mounted high up, one above the bar, and one on the far wall. He’d been greeted warmly by a small woman named Gladys with spiky hair dyed jet black. Upon learning he was relatively fresh from deployment and had never been inside a VFW before, she’d bought his first beer and checked on him more often than the regulars.

  She poured him another draft beer in a beveled twelve-ounce mug and set it on the bar. “You live here now?”

  “No, ma’am. Just visiting. Haven’t really settled down yet.”

  “It’s a nice town. Nice people.”

  He pretended to watch a hockey game, attracting the attention of a man three stools down with unwashed hair and a denim jacket. The man gave a drunken soliloquy about hockey, but Corus didn’t know enough about the game to agree or disagree. A group of Vietnam-aged vets watched NASCAR on the other TV but didn’t show much of an interest in it. One of them, a dark-haired man with a bushy beard, sat down next to Corus, seeming in no shortage of smiles and questions. At first, Corus wondered if his pointed examination was to gauge the veracity of his veteran status, but it turned out Teddy was just sizing up his target before he launched into his own military history. Teddy was nice enough, and his stories were funny, if perhaps laced with bullshit, but Teddy worked at a sawmill and didn’t know anything about farming or the Tanners.

  Corus perked up when he saw his first John Deer cap and his first pair of overalls. A group of old timers arrived within ten minutes of one another and sat in a reserved table in the corner. Gladys brought them their drinks as they filtered in without having to ask what they wanted. Then she sat with them, holding a beer of her own, and chopped it up with them for a time. When she got up, she checked on Corus first, like a gracious host. He told her he was doing fine and pointed to his still full beer.

  “We have a newcomer?” a bold voice asked from the huddle of old men. The largest of them stood, the one who looked most like he’d spent part of his day on a tractor, and eased up into Corus’ personal space in an unobtrusive manner, simultaneously putting a warm hand on Corus’ shoulder and shaking his hand.

  “Hello, sir. Nice establishment you have here. Hope I’m not intruding.”

  “I was going say you looked like a Truesdale. You aren’t a Truesdale, are you?”

  “No, sir. I’m not from here.”

  “Gladys, doesn’t he look like a Truesdale? Which one am I thinking of. Jimmy? Johnny?”

  “Jeremy Truesdale.”

  “Jeremy. That’s right. Doesn’t he look just like him?”

  Gladys narrowed her eyes at Corus. “I don’t think so, Al. Built the same maybe, but that’s it.”

  Al looked at Corus as if expecting him to speak, so close Corus could smell the soap he’d recently bathed with.

  “I don’t know any Truesdales,” Corus said. “My last name is Tanner.”

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “Oh, well, heck. I know the Tanners. Sure, that’s where I knew your look.”

  “Tanners?” Corus feigned ignorance and looked to Gladys and Teddy for explanation.

  “You’re not here visiting family?” Gladys asked. “The Tanners?”

  “I’m not,” Corus said. “There are Tanners here?” He sipped his beer innocently.

  “Oh yeah,” Al said. “Whole onion operation full of Tanner
s. Well, not so many anymore. There’s the girl. Pretty little thing. Olivia?”

  “Olive,” Gladys said. “She’s a real estate agent now.” She looked at Corus. “Her father is a member here but doesn’t come in too often.”

  “What branch?” Corus asked.

  Al turned to the Vietnam vets. “Grover, what branch was Rodger Tanner?”

  “Army, 25th infantry. And he was a LRRP.”

  “A LRRP? Wow.” Corus cocked an eye, impressed.

  The Long-range Reconnaissance Patrol units were one of the precursors to the modern-day Ranger battalions.

  “He must have seen heavy action.”

  “He did.” Grover hung an arm over the back of his chair. “Funny thing. His brother was in the Air Force safe in Europe. But he died from some sort of sickness. Rodger made it home and got the farm. He’s turned into one hell of an onion farmer.”

  “You mean his wife has,” his neighbor said.

  A few chuckles erupted, and the short exchange fizzled out. Al returned to his table, but he carried the topic of the Tanner farm with him. The oldest man at the table, who had to be in his late eighties, leaned forward and said keenly, “You heard what happened to John Phillips?”

  The men discussed the event of John Phillips’ death without expressing a great deal of sadness. More concerning to them were the circumstances. They’d heard conflicting accounts from the rumor mill, but one of the men had a son in law enforcement, so they had some details right. None of them could venture a guess as to what had happened, so the conversation turned to more concrete matters, namely Phillips’ land.

  “Tanner’s bought it. Paid a pretty penny, too. They’ll be planting shortly.”

  “It’s good they plant early. They suck up all the labor with what they pay.”

  “Can’t find a few extra hands behind Finch Feed until they’re done with them. That’s true enough.”

  “That’s if the Tanners ain’t got their fill of them South Africans. I’d like to get me a South African. They say they work like hell. But you won’t be luring them from the Tanner farm, not with what they pay.”