Faye Kellerman - Double Homicide

Katz said, “How do you do that, Mr. Skaggs?”

“Do what?”

“Slaughter with kindness.”

“Shoot ‘em,” said Skaggs. “Right here.” Reaching behind his neck, he fingered the soft spot where stalk met skull. “Shoot ’em at an upward angle. You wanna get ‘em in the medulla oblongata.”

“Not a shotgun, right?” said Katz. “Too messy from up close.”

Bart looked at him as if he were a space alien. “You use a long gun or a large-caliber handgun with a Magnum load.”

Emma stepped in front of her husband. “Let’s be clear: We never did any big-time slaughtering. That woulda been against regulations. We ship the cattle to a processing plant in Iowa, and they do everything from there. I was talking when we needed meat for our own table. I’d tell him, and he’d run an old steer into the pen and put it out of its misery. We never took the good beef for ourselves. But even with tired old beef, you dry-age it a couple of days in the refrigerator, then you marinate it, in beer or something, and you got yourself a tasty steak.”

Bart Skaggs stretched his free arm. The gauze bandage had yellowed around the edges and was dotted with blood. “Jewish rabbis use the knife across the throat. I seen ‘em do that over in Iowa. If you’re good with the knife and the knife’s real sharp, it’s fast. Those rabbis cut good. They don’t even stun ’em. If you’re not good, it’s messy.”

“You stun ‘em,” said Katz.

“Just in case.”

“Before you shoot ‘em.”

“Yup. To quiet ‘em down.”

“How do you go about it?”

“You distract ‘em by talking to ’em, nice and low and comforting. Then you hit ‘em upside the head.”

“The medulla?”

Bart shook his head. “In front, over the eyes. To confuse ‘em.”

“Hit ‘em with what?” said Katz.

“A bar,” said Bart. “A sledgehammer. I had a piece of axle from an old truck. That worked good.”

“I’m trying to picture it,” said Katz. “First you hit ‘em from the front, then you run around and shoot ’em from the back?”

The room fell silent.

“Am I missing something?” said Katz.

Emma turned stony. “I see where all this is leading, and you’re really wasting your time.”

Suddenly, her husband took hold of her arm and drew her back so that she was no longer blocking him. She started to speak but thought better of it.

Bart fixed his eyes on Katz’s. “If you’re doing the shooting, you’re not doing the stunning. Someone else stuns ‘em, and when their legs buckle, you shoot ’em. Otherwise, the animal goes skittish and it can jump and you miss. That happens, you have to shoot ‘em a bunch of times and it’s real messy.”

For him a long speech. Warming to the topic.

“Sounds like a two-person job,” Two Moons stated evenly.

More silence.

“Yup,” Bart finally said.

“We used to do it together,” said Emma. “I used the hammer and Bart used the gun. Same way we did everything back when we were ranching. Teamwork. That’s what it takes. That’s why we got a good marriage.”

“Cows are big animals,” said Darrel. “To get leverage you’d need to stand on top of something, right?”

“Why’s all this important?” said Emma.

“Call us curious, ma’am.”

She glared.

Katz said, “Do you stand on a ladder, Mr. Skaggs?”

“The animal’s in a pen,” said Bart. “Tight so it can’t move around too much. The way we had it at the ranch, the pen was dug out lower than the rest of the yard. You’d walk ‘em down a ramp to get in there. And then we used benches on top of that so we were tall enough.”

A small man feeling big as he slaughtered, thought Katz.

“It ain’t rocket science.” Emma glared at them. “You oughta be ashamed of yourselves… making two old-timers like us feel like criminals.”

Two Moons shrugged. “All I’m saying is I’d be pretty sore at Olafson. The man took bread out of your mouths.”

“He did worse than that. He took bread out and burned it. Knowing we were barely treading water and making sure we drowned.” She waved an arm around the cramped, close room. “Think this is the way we want to live? The man’s dead and gone. True, I’m not shedding any tears. But we sure as heck didn’t harm a hair on his head. With him dead or alive we’re no better off. The court says we can’t run the herd, end of story.”

“Like you said,” Two Moons countered, “before Olafson joined the group, they were all talk. With him gone, couldn’t you go back to court?”

“With whose money?” She peered at Darrel. “You’re an Indian, right? I got Choctaw in me, from way back. Maybe that’s why I loved working the land. You should understand what I’m talking about. That man accused us of raping the land, but he raped us. ”

“Revenge can be sweet,” said Katz.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Emma snapped. “Why would I ruin my life for him ? I got my health and so does Barton.” Her smile was sudden. Vaguely poisonous. “Besides, I got a check from the U.S. government, rolls in every month whether I lie around in bed or get up. That’s heaven, right? That’s your promised land.”

The couple took the detectives outside, over to a storage shed behind the garage that looked ready to collapse. Freezing inside, the chill from the ground going right through your shoes. Bart showed the detectives the offending barbed-wire roll, along with other junk, including a towing winch. Big, heavy thing, rusted at some of the points. If there was blood there, the detectives couldn’t see it.

Without warning, Bart unwound the gauze on his hand and showed them the jagged gash, two or so inches long, that ran from the webbing between his thumb and his forefinger down to his knobby wrist.

It had been stitched together with the thickest surgical thread Katz had ever seen. The edges of the cut had begun to scab, there was some leakage around the sutures, and the skin had gone puffy and inflamed. It looked to be a few days old.

Katz asked the name of the doctor who’d done the sewing.

Emma Skaggs laughed.

Bart said, “You’re looking at her.”

“You, Mrs. Skaggs?”

“None other.”

“Are you trained as a nurse?”

“Trained as a wife,” said Emma. “Been patching him up for forty years.”

Bart grinned and brandished the wound.

Emma said, “I got veterinary needles and thread left over from the ranch. For him you need it, the big-gauge stuff. He’s got the hide of a bull. Got vet antibiotics, too.

Same stuff they make for humans, only for animals it’s a whole lot cheaper.“

“What’d you use for anesthesia?” said Katz. “On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to know.”

“Crown Royal, ninety proof.” Bart broke into loud guffaws. It took him a moment to settle down. “You fellows seen enough?” He started rewrapping the hand.

Darrel said, “Looks to be a little infected.”

“ Little ‘s the key word,” said Emma. “You can’t get hurt by a little of anything.”

“Unlike Mr. Olafson,” said Katz. “Know of anyone else who resented him?”

“Nope,” said Emma, “but if he treated others like he treated us, there had to be plenty more out there.”

Katz said, “Would you mind if we made an appointment for a print tech to come by to get both your fingerprints?”

“Wouldn’t mind a’tall,” Bart said.

“Treating us like criminals,” Emma muttered.

“It’s routine,” Two Moons answered.

“His got to be on file, somewhere,” said Emma. “From when he served in Korea. Mine aren’t, but suit yourselves. Must be nice to have all that free time.”