Bill Pronzini: Zigzag

I stood for a couple of seconds, tensed, listening. Rain drip, the hum and clatter of the generator. No other sounds. Then I did an about-face and walked fast back to the car; leaned in to release the catch on the panel beneath the dash where I keep my .38 Colt Bodyguard. Automatic reaction to strange and potentially dangerous surroundings. Better safe than sorry, always.

I slid the weapon into my coat pocket, kept my hand on it as I went back to the shed. Still nothing new to hear on the way, or when I edged up close to the entrance. I banged on the thick, tight-fitting door, using my fist this time. No response. The door was not locked; the knob turned easily when I tried it. All right, then. Illegal trespass is usually a bad idea, but the murdered dog justified it here. I turned the knob all the way, opened the door.

I expected cold semidarkness; what I got was humidity and a blaze of light that made me blink and squint. Both light and humidity came from a series of high-wattage LED hooded reflectors hanging in rows over three-quarters of the interior. Beneath them, on shelves, were dozens of green plants in various stages of growth. The shed had no windows, but ducting ran from an exhaust fan into a hole cut in the back wall. There was a small dehumidifier, and gardening tools, paper bags, and a loose scattering of plastic containers on a workbench. The containers were empty except for a greenish-gray residue. More of the same substance, a mixture of dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flower buds, was sprinkled over the bench top.

Indoor pot farm.

So now I knew what Floyd Mears did for a living. Not that I cared much in principle; marijuana growing and selling is already legal in some states and others would soon follow, California included. Everybody to his vice, as long as no innocent parties get hurt in the process. Except that innocent parties do get hurt sometimes, and not only humans. That Doberman outside. Guard dog, probably. Blown away by somebody who wanted access to cured weed ready for smoking and/or sale. The containers strewn over the bench, another that had fallen to the floor, indicated a quick search and grab.

A bad feeling had begun to work in me. There was no sign of either Mears or his visitor in here. The cabin, then? I backed out of the shed, shut the door, crossed back over there.

The first thing I did was stretch up on the spongy ground under the window and look through a narrow aperture between the curtain halves. All I could see was a small section of the front room. Table, one chair toppled on its side, and another upright at a skewed angle as if it had been violently shoved backward. The only other things I could make out were a woodstove and a small stack of cordwood.

I did not want to go inside. But the bad feeling was even stronger now, and there are some things you simply can’t avoid doing. If the cabin was empty, then all right, I could drive away from here without any further involvement and with a clear conscience. The murder of the dog and running of a small-scale marijuana farm were misdemeanors and none of my business as such.

If the cabin was empty.

But it wasn’t.

The door was unlocked, so access was no problem. I rapped on it again, waited, then shoved it open wide and leaned in without entering. I could see more of the room then. Part of a larder and a makeshift kitchen with a kerosene stove, an open doorway into what was probably a bedroom — and a dead man sprawled across the threshold.

He lay twisted on his right side, his face turned toward me. A welter of dried blood shone darkly across the fronts of an open leather jacket and white shirt. Shot like the Doberman. How many times I couldn’t tell. Not self-inflicted, even though there was a gun, what looked to be a Saturday night special, loosely clenched in one outflung hand.

That should have been enough for me to keep from entering, but it wasn’t. One man dead, two vehicles parked in the yard — that didn’t add up the way it should. I went on in.

Murder, all right.

Two victims, not just one.

The second dead man was in a seated posture on the floor, propped against the wall on the far side of the room, his legs spread out in an inverted V. Blood all over him, too, and streaked down the rough-hewn boards above him. Shot while backing up and the force of impact had slammed him into the wall. On the planking beside the body was a large-caliber automatic on an aluminum frame. I couldn’t tell how many times he had been hit, either, but it was plain enough that they’d both cut loose with several rounds each; bullet holes pocked the walls at both ends of the room.

I’m no stranger to crime scenes, God knows, but a double homicide like this was something new and ugly in my experience. And the way I’d walked into it gave it an even more nightmarish quality. Drive up to the Russian River on a routine job, get a name I’d never heard before as a possible accident witness, come out here and stumble onto a shed full of marijuana and a dog and two strangers shot to death. One of those crazy zigzags that leave you feeling unlucky and faintly disoriented.

I stood motionless for several seconds, sucking deep lungfuls of cold air, automatically taking in details. The corpse on the floor between the two rooms: forty or so, short red hair, fireplug build, dressed in the once-white shirt and corduroy jacket and a pair of slacks. The one sitting against the wall: a few years older, thickset, beard-stubbled jowls, bald except for thin comb-over strands of straggly brown hair, wearing Levi’s and a plaid lumberman’s shirt. Mears? The room was cold and damp — no fire in the woodstove in a long while; the all too familiar stench of sudden violent death was faint, and from the appearance of the bodies, rigor had come and gone. The shootings must have taken place sometime last night.

Marijuana deal gone bad, the way it looked — the kind of thing that happens all too often these days, though it usually involves large and street-valuable amounts of weed. Both men armed, an argument of some kind, out came the guns like a couple of trigger-happy cowboys drawing on each other in a western B movie, and they’d blazed away until they were both down for the count. That kind of stupid scenario.

A little funny that such a thing would happen here, considering the kind of small growing operation I’d seen in the shed. Not that it mattered as far as I was concerned. The local law’s headache, not mine.

I backed out of there, opened my cell phone on the way to the car. The fact that I was able to get a clear signal in a place surrounded by dense forest was a relief.

Crime scene investigation, whether big city, suburban, or rural, pretty much follows the same established pattern. Slow, methodical, meticulous routine. I’d been through it so many times, as investigating officer and witness both, I could write a full-length, dully repetitive book about my experiences. When you’re in the position I was in here, it’s a tedious and seemingly interminable process made even worse by the fact that I was dealing with strangers in unfamiliar, somewhat isolated territory.

The routine is unpleasant no matter which side you’re on, but easier if you’re part of the crew because you’re busy all the while. For a material witness it’s static and numbing. Sit and wait, answer questions from the first responders, sit and wait, answer questions from the second wave and men in charge, sit and wait some more. The only good part was that no suspicion was directed at me once I showed my ID and explained the job that had brought me to Rio Verdi and then to Floyd Mears’ property. For most of the three-plus hours I was required to remain on the scene I was shunted out of the way and left alone.

Cell phone reception was pretty good here; I called Tamara, who was still at the agency, to tell her what had gone down today, then Kerry at Bates and Carpenter and Emily at home to let them know I’d be late and not to wait dinner. All I said to them was that I’d gotten unavoidably hung up; they did not need to know the unpleasant details. After that I sat in the car and vegetated. Jake Runyon has a knack for shutting himself down at times like this, sort of like a computer put into sleep mode, but I’ve never been able to master that ability. My thoughts tend to run riot while I’m on a protracted wait, skipping from one subject to another indiscriminately, so that I end up feeling antsy and disgruntled. Patience has never been one of my long suits even at the best of times.