Chapter 16
I narrowed in on bounty hunter since that made sense to me. It fit the facts. Maybe I was chasing a shadow. Maybe it was a misdirection of my own making. But it felt like a good lead, and I would ask for help to follow up.
There were no other patrons in the library that I could see. So I flipped open my phone to make a call. I didn’t want to leave the computer. If I went outside to make the call, the workstation might not be available when I came back.
“Garvey.”
“Ed. How’s it going today?”
“Liberty. Sorry I had to cut you off yesterday. Family duties, you know.”
“No problem. Say, can I trouble you to check into something for me?”
He hesitated for a short time before asking suspiciously, “What’s the topic?” He revealed no enthusiasm in his question. I still owed him an explanation of my activities out here. Yet his question implied he would grant my request for assistance, though it might be grudgingly. Still, he was being easier on me than I had anticipated.
“Bounty hunters!” I said, a bit louder than intended.
I looked up hoping my blurted comment hadn’t been noticed, but Allison fixed an intense gaze in my direction. It was then I noticed other patrons in the library. There were two women browsing magazines, and a man checking out some books. They were also staring in my direction. There could even be more people in the building behind the shelves.
“What?” Ed asked in surprise.
“Hold on, Ed. I need to step outside for better reception.” Better reception was always a good ploy with a cell phone. It can be a means to delay a conversation, to seek privacy, to create uninterrupted time to think about what you want to say next. In this case, it was simply to take my bothersome noise outside.
I kept the phone to my ear. As I passed by Allison at her desk, I mouthed as meekly as possible, “Sorry.”
Outside, I continued the conversation. “Ed, I’m back.” I paused a beat. “I think I should start at the beginning. I know this is going to sound a bit weird, but please bear with me.”
“OK. I’ve heard weird before. Shoot.”
“When I was hiking on Sunday, I found a body in the forest. That’s why the Willow Run police called you guys. It was a follow-up to their investigation.”
A few moments passed before Ed slowly said, “OK.” He sounded less than convinced. His response suggested that he was waiting for a better explanation than that. Before I could bring myself to continue, he prompted me. “You want to share anything else that might have led them to call us?”
He knew. I suspected he knew it all yesterday. This confirmed it. It was time to fess up. So I told him everything. Not just about the 9-1-1 call and that the body disappeared, but everything else, including my tussle with Deputy Powell, that I had climbed up the slope, saw the guy with the rifle aimed at me, found the trail of boot prints and the tire tracks. I also told him about my suspicions regarding the bounty hunters and about Enid Powell probably receiving a payoff from them.
For several long seconds after I finished, Ed remained silent. The phone connection wasn’t broken since I could still faintly hear him breathing. He finally spoke.
“Nathan, what the hell are you doing? You’re a civilian now. You’re not a cop or private eye or reporter. This isn’t any of your business. Just go hiking and write your book, your fictional novel.”
But I had made it my business since no one else would. I hesitated, and then responded tiredly. “Yes, Dad.” Dad was the nickname I gave Ed when he became my mentor. I used it whenever he started telling me what to do.
“Maybe I deserved that,” he conceded. “But it needed to be said. This is beyond weird.”
“You may be right, but I have to do this. It’s important. I have to do this for him since no one else will. And I have to do this for me. I have to prove I was right.” There. I had finally said it, not just to Ed, but also to myself. I may have convinced myself that the dead man needed someone to speak for him since no one else would. But the real truth was I simply had to prove I was right. It had to be done to rebuild my shattered confidence. I needed to prove I was not litter, that I still had value in this world.
“Did it ever occur to you they might be right? That your guy was not dead, that he just got up and walked away?”
“No,” I insisted. “I was there. I know what I saw.”
“Well, buddy, just remember that smarter people than you have made that mistake.”
“I know, Ed. But there’s no doubt. No doubt at all.” I didn’t have to force conviction in saying this. That certainty came through without effort. I really did have absolutely no doubt.
“Well, it’s hard for me to buy in, buddy,” Ed said. “All I have is your story. Got any evidence? Any pictures to show me? You know the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words.”
“Not much. The Sheriff deleted the pictures from my cell phone.”
“You’re not making it easy to believe you.”
The line was silent for a long time. Finally Ed spoke again.
“OK,” he conceded. “This seems important to you. And I’m sure you didn’t call me just to unburden yourself. So before we get to what you want me to do, how did your guy die?”
Relief surged through me. He was going to help. And he got right to the point. I liked that in him.
“Thanks, Ed. This means a lot, you know that.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just tell me.”
“OK. I think he was running in the dark through a forest. Ran off a cliff. Died on impact.”
“Running in the dark? Your man sounds like a candidate for one of those Darwin Awards.”
I knew it well. Back in the 1980s, the Darwin Award emerged as a joke, to poke fun at people who, through their own stupidity, kill themselves unintentionally and thus remove themselves from the gene pool.
"We can only hope your guy didn’t already have children." He laughed.
My dead guy might be considered a candidate for the award, but I suspected there were extenuating circumstances. Bounty hunters were chasing him.
Ed was still laughing. “Sorry for getting side-tracked, buddy. What are you going to ask me to do to help?”
“Ed, I’ve run through all this. The bounty hunter angle fits. So I was hoping you could check if a dead guy has been turned in for a reward. I didn’t find anything on the Internet, but something like this has to make some noise somewhere. The dead guy appeared Hispanic, but that’s all I have. No name. I guess maybe 35 or 40 years old, maybe five foot four, 130 to 140 pounds. The body must have already been turned in. There’s no way anyone is going to carry it around in the summer for more than a day or two.”
“Nathan, I figured at some point I’d be helping you out. But I thought it would be you moving back here to mooch off me. I have to admit. Never thought I’d be looking for a dead bounty.” He paused, probably to let me stew a bit, letting me know this was going to cost me at some point down the road. “Any description of the bounty hunter, the guy you saw with the rifle?”
“No, the sun was behind him, so I couldn’t get a good look at his face. All I saw was the outline of his head and shoulders. And the rifle. But I do have a couple of names, former bounty hunter buddies of the Deputy. Ross Browne and Joey Hammons.”
“OK,” Ed said, sighing. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“And one more thing?” I said quickly.
He sighed again in resignation. “OK, what else?”
“Do you still have that connection in INS? Was his name Craig?”
“You mean Craig Frymuth. Yeah, I still have his phone number. Why?”
“Last year, there was another Hispanic man in Willow Run. He was captured by the local cops and then turned over to INS. He was probably deported back to Mexico.” I gave him the details. “Can you see if there is a trail on this guy?”
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nbsp; Ed sighed heavily. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Thanks for helping, Ed. And for being patient with me.”
“Yeah, I’m a soft touch for lost causes.”
We both rang off.