Cypress Grove by James Sallis Page B

time like some others. Momma brought him up right.”
    “Actually, sir, it was my sister. Our mother passed when I was five.”
    “How much older was your sister?”
    “She was sixteen.”
    “Good woman?”
    “The best. Lives out in Arizona now, has three kids.”
    “Bringing up her second family.”
    I nodded.
    “My folks disappeared when I was fifteen,” Doc said. “We never did find out what became of them. There were two kids younger than me, one older. I was the one took care of us. It’s a miracle, but we all turned out all right.”
    “That’s what families are all about.”
    “Used to be, anyhow.” He finished his coffee, put the mug down on the desk, and slid it towards Don Lee, who went to refill it. “You wanna put some goddamn sugar in this one to kill the taste?” Doc said. Then to me: “What’d you need?”
    “Considering what I have, just about anything would be welcome.”
    “You read the file?”
    “Sheriff Bates showed it to me.”
    “Don’t know as I can add much to what’s there.”
    “You didn’t do the autopsy yourself, right?”
    “Just the preliminary. Autopsy gets done up to the capital. Technically speaking I’m just coroner. Hereabouts that’s an elected position, doesn’t even require medical training.”
    Don Lee began, “It’s an important—”
    “It’s political bullshit’s what it is. Nobody else would take it, and for damn good reason.”
    “The body had been there a while, you said.”
    “Been there alive for some time before he was there dead, and that was three, four days.”
    “The stake had been driven in there?”
    “No way. Where he lay’d be my guess. Someone mopped up as best he could. Lot of blood trace still. The bedding was rolled. Makes me think maybe he’d come back, laid down to rest thinking he’d go back out.”
    “So the body got moved.”
    “Absolutely. Some point after the stake went in—dead or almost, really no way to tell—he got wired to that trellis.”
    “Blood and skin under his nails?”
    “Looked to be. Could just be dirt, grease.”
    “Maybe that’ll give us something. I assume State’ll do blood typing, run the DNA?”
    “Blood, yes. Anything heavier’n that gets shipped out to Little Rock or Memphis, one of the big labs.”
    “You’re saying be patient.”
    “Be very patient.”
    “Nothing else?”
    I looked around the room in turn. Bates shook his head, as did Don Lee.
    “One thing I have been thinking on,” Doc said.
    “Okay.”
    “This man’s been out there, on the street, a while.”
    “Three, four months at least. Probably a lot longer.”
    “So how’s it come about he has soft hands?”

Chapter Twelve
    FOR YEARS IT WAS KNOWN around the department as the Monkey Ward caper.
    We got tagged midday one Saturday. Dispatch was sending out a black-and-white, but the Lieutenant wanted detectives to rendezvous. Half a dozen calls had come in about whatever the hell was going on out there.
    It was one of those new developments north of Poplar near East High School, reclaimed land where long-boarded-up storefronts, restaurants and thrift shops were being leveled to create inner-city suburbs, row upon row of sweet little perfect houses each with its own sweet front and rear lawn.
    When we pulled up, one of the guys had a hedge trimmer, the other one a posthole digger. Took us some time to sort out they were in each other’s yards. They’d gone from insults across the fence to a swinging match, and when that did neither of them much good, they’d opted for technical support. One was busily defoliating every bush and small tree on his neighbor’s lawn, including plants in window boxes. The other was busily making the next yard look like a convention of moles had just let out.
    The uniforms had just about talked them down by the time we got there. These guys had been riding together for fifteen, sixteen years; everyone in the department knew them. Tall one was Greaser, named for the hair tonic he must