Joe Lansdale - Devil Red

“On a jogging trail?” I said.

“That day, the only two people feeling like they needed to be physically fit were these two. They would have ended up better had they sat on the couch in front of the TV at home and ate cheese doodles and sniffed glue.”

I looked at some of the other photos. They were more of the same at closer and different angles. There was one close shot of their heads so you could see where the bullets had gone in. Close photos of the girl’s clothes heaped up. Close-ups of the ground and shoe marks, and a close-up of Ted’s shoe bottoms.

“How did Mrs. Christopher get all of this material?” Leonard asked.

“She knows a lot of people,” Marvin said. “And Cason knows a lot of people. Money and connections solve a lot of problems.”

“Was the girl raped?” I asked.

“No,” Marvin said. “Just stripped. Some of the cops thought maybe he was interrupted.”

“If he was,” Leonard said, “wouldn’t shooting her in the head have been a bigger interruption? Did anybody notice gunfire?”

“Nothing about that in the files,” Marvin said. “The guy’s wallet was taken.”

“He had it in his jogging pants?” I asked.

“That’s what they figure. The pants have a back pocket. He didn’t have a wallet on him, and there wasn’t one in his car. Also, his ring finger was cut off. His mother said he wore a high school graduation ring.”

“Did it ever turn up?” I asked. “A pawnshop, that sort of thing?”

“Nope,” Marvin said. “Not yet.”

“Anything stolen from her?” I asked.

“Her shoes were missing. And her socks.”

“Anyone see the couple earlier that day?” I asked.

“Nothing here to indicate that,” Marvin said.

“So how did anyone know they went jogging?” I asked.

“When they found the car and found the bodies and jogging clothes, they put two and two together. Jogging clothes. Jogging trail. No brains were overheated in figuring that part out.”

“Did you guys notice the bottom of the Christopher kid’s shoes?” Leonard said.

We picked up our photos and looked.

“Nice tread,” I said.

“Yep,” Leonard said, “and I have noticed something that we elite in the crime business like to call a clue.”

I turned the picture left and right. I said, “The shoes are clean.”

“Yep,” Leonard said. “If they were new, and he did a bit of jogging before he got interrupted and shot in the head, maybe they’d look kind of clean, but these look really clean. I think someone at the police department thought the same. Otherwise, why would they take a close-up of the bottom of his shoes?”

“Damn, Leonard,” Marvin said, “that may be the first time you’ve ever had a good idea. You’re like a regular Miss Marple.”

“And her shoes are missing,” Leonard said. “So maybe they got taken away before she was dumped. They got the clothes dropped all right, but forgot the socks and shoes.”

“So, you’re thinking they weren’t shot on the trail?” I said.

Leonard nodded, and now he had about him an air of superiority. That’s how he was, one good idea and for a day he thought he was Einstein. “And the car, it could have been left there when the killer dumped them. Or maybe the car was dropped off later. I don’t know. It’s just an idea.”

“It kind of makes sense,” I said. “I was bothered by the fact the bodies lay there that long and no one found them. Could have been that way, but I been to that place, and it’s pretty busy with people running, walking, picnicking, screwing in the bushes. But if they were killed somewhere else and dropped off early… Any information on time of death?”

“They were killed in the morning, was their determination,” Marvin said. “That’s all the report there is about that. As I said, half a day maybe, if they were lying there the whole time. It’s a guess. They’re country cops and country doctors. Not stupid, just not geared toward that sort of thing. The place doesn’t have a real coroner.”

“What about blood evidence?” I asked. “That would let you know something about where they were killed.”

“There’s no blood evidence information here,” Marvin said, shuffling through some pages with writing on them. Leonard and I shuffled through the same pages. I said, “Isn’t that a little odd? I mean, they got all this information, but nothing on that?”

“Again, the Camp Rapture police aren’t noted for efficiency,” Marvin said. “They do have a hell of a fund-raiser with an assortment of different kinds of barbecue, including raccoon and possum, and a country band once a year, but blood evidence tools… not so much. The chief over there is new, and the one before him was an educated idiot. Degrees out the ass and all the common sense of a duck. Anyway, the new lady they got is all right. Before her it was just good old straightforward corruption, so they’ve moved up a notch.”

“You think this is something the cops of that time were in on?” I asked. “Some kind of cover-up?”

“I think they were just incompetent,” he said.

We sipped coffee, looked at the photos and the information for a while. When I was through, I looked up, said, “There’s a kind of neatness about it.”

“That’s what Mrs. Christopher thinks. That it’s all too neat.”

“What does she think really happened?” I asked.

“She thinks it was a hit,” Marvin said. “She thinks he made someone mad, or knew something he shouldn’t, so they killed him, made it look like another kind of crime. A lot of that is just motherly instinct, but Cason thinks maybe there’s something to it.”

“So you care about what he thinks?” I said.

“He is an investigative reporter. You grow some instincts, you do that enough.”

“And maybe,” I said, “Mrs. Christopher is just grieving and trying to make more sense of this than just a standard old murder. The idea that anyone can die for any kind of stupid thing is hard to take, especially if it’s someone close to you.”

“That’s also possible,” Marvin said. “The daughter, June, Ted’s sister, thinks there’s nothing to it.”

“You talked to her?” I asked.

Marvin shook his head. “That will be your job. Mrs. Christopher said Ted and his sister didn’t get along well, not even when they were kids. She also said June was bothered that Mrs. Christopher planned to leave her money to Ted. Which on the surface sounds tough, but she said she planned to do that because June married into money and divorced real well. Ted, without family money, would have ended up with the lint in his shorts. I should note too, that the private detective she hired didn’t believe it was a hit either.”

“So we’re sloppy seconds?” I said.

“Yep,” Marvin said. “She told me that right up front. I knew the guy she hired, Jimmy Malone. Used to run into him from time to time doing police work. Not exactly on the up-and-up. When he didn’t find anything, Mrs. Christopher let it lie for a while, then got it on her mind again that it was a setup, and hired us.”

“So,” Leonard said, “she thinks Malone took the money and did nothing?”

“My guess is,” Marvin said, “that’s what Cason thinks and is afraid we’re gonna do the same. Me, I don’t know. Jimmy was a shit, and a womanizer, and he liked money too much, but he usually did the job. He just didn’t always do it the way it ought to be done. He didn’t mind playing angles. But the thing is, he didn’t find out any more than the police knew.”

“We could talk to him,” Leonard said.

“Only if you talk to the dead,” Marvin said. “He retired, then promptly drowned in a boating accident out at the lake.”