“Why are you doing this, Detective?”
“Wade.”
“Sorry, I was raised to address my elders in only one fashion.”
“I know the pawnshop owner who sold you the thirty-eight. I hope you’re not entertaining cowboy fantasies.”
“I gave up being other people’s litter box.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that. Let’s sit down a minute.”
He eased himself down on a back step and looked blankly into the woods. Some might call his eyes dead. But for something to die, it must first be alive, and I saw no sign of loss or anger or remorse or even injury in his face, as though I were looking at a prosthesis rather than tissue. The lack of expression in Detective Benbow was the kind you see in people who have witnessed events that forever change their view of the world. They never talk about it or struggle with it. Instead, they accept the fact that human beings are capable of deeds Satan couldn’t think up.
“Mr. Benbow?” I said.
“What?”
“Were you in the war?”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered.”
He shook it off. “Yesterday the body of another woman was found way back in some rocks down the Pass. The body might have been there several days. Cause of death, broken neck. She could have fallen from a cliff. Or somebody could have dragged her there. She was a hooker.” He held his eyes on mine.
“Okay?” I said.
“Got any reason to believe your friend Spud Caudill might have been involved?”
I tried to keep my face empty and not to swallow. In my mind’s eye, I saw Spud in the fog and heard the bugling of the elk and his claim that he was up early driving off poachers.
“Well?” Benbow said.
“Why pick on poor Spud?”
“Because he frequents the cathouse where the hooker worked on and off.”
“I have nothing to say about Spud, sir.”
“How about Marvin Fogel, the driver of the four-wheel zoo?”
“I think he’s a junkie and a meltdown.” I studied my watch and avoided his eyes.
“Meaning?”
“I had a misunderstanding with him. He was carrying a splintered board, one with a sixteen-penny nail in it.”
“One that could make a wound like an ice pick?”
“That’s possible.”
“And you decided to keep this information to yourself?”
“You know why jails are filled with pitiful people?”
“Tell me,” he said.
“They’re easy to catch.”