Shallow Graves

Pellam to his feet. He was coughing, choking. “Water, please, some water.”
    “Sure, no problem.” The first deputy stepped intothe camper and came back with a cup of water. Pellam took it and swallowed the whole thing down. Breathing desperately, his chest heaving, like a nearly drowned man on land once again.
    “Can you stand up, sir?”
    Pellam was frowning, watching the other deputy going over the clearing with his flashlight, inch by inch.
    “Yeah, I can.”
    “Good.” The deputy smiled. “Because you’re under arrest.” He glanced at his friend. “Read him his rights. And search him.”

Chapter 16
    “ AND YOU DIDN’T find anything?” Moorhouse asked the sheriff.
    The mayor squinted against the brilliant sunlight streaming into his office early on Sunday morning.
    “Nothing. My deputies searched like you told us. But they didn’t find anything.”
    “You’re sure? No drugs? All these movie people do drugs all the time,” Moorhouse said.
    Which Tom knew because he and the wife read People. But he also knew they’d searched like a son of a bitch and found zip.
    “He was out when they found him?”
    “Nosir. But he was down, lying under the camper. He couldn’t have thrown anything far enough so’s we’d miss it. We combed the ground. And I mean combed.”
    Moorhouse warily asked, “Any idea who he was mixing it up with?”
    “Nope. You want, I can ask around.”
    Moorhouse shook his head. “No. Pellam probably started the fight.” He motioned with his head toward the Sheriff’s Department, with its small lockup. “Can’t blame some local kid for getting tough withan asshole from the Coast thinks he owns the place. Any evidence of the, you know, the gas bomb in the clinic?”
    “Nope.”
    “Had to’ve been him though.”
    “You’d think,” the sheriff said. But uncertainly. He kept looking at Moorhouse curiously, playing with the big hammer of his chrome-plated .357.
    The mayor grimaced. Now I got an envelope of LSD or PVC or whatever the hell it is out loose somewhere in town. Where was it? What if some kid gets a hold of it? Christ.
    “What about Pellam?” he asked the sheriff. “He okay?”
    “Seems to be. Brought him in last night, blood all over him. He went into the john at the station and puked his guts out. I thought maybe we oughta get him to the hospital, but—”
    “The hospital that he tried to fucking burn down.”
    “Uh,” Tom said noncommittally. “He seems okay now.”
    “We better have a little talk with him,” Moorhouse said. “Bring him in.”
    HANDCUFFED.
    Standing in front of this small-town shine, who was wearing his favorite baby-blue suit.
    And handcuffed, for Christsake.
    “Mr. Pellam, let me say how sorry we are about what happened. Things like this you don’t usually see here. Cleary’s a peaceful place.”
    “Surprising,” said the sheriff. “That it happened, I mean.”
    Pellam nodded to him and squinted against the cold, brutal sun that poured in through the smeared windows. The worst pain was in his right hand—the knuckles—where he’d hit bone.
    “Why’d I spend the night in jail?”
    “Oh.” Moorhouse swivelled back in his green leatherette chair. “You were arrested for D&D. Didn’t the deputy read you your rights?”
    “Sure he did, Mayor,” the sheriff offered.
    Pellam asked, “D&D?”
    “Drunk and disorderly conduct. How do you plead?”
    April fool. Had to be a joke. Pellam even gave them a short laugh. “I got jumped by two assholes knocked on my door, dragged me out and beat the hell out of me. That’s not D&D.”
    Moorhouse smiled patiently. “Guilty or not guilty.”
    “Not guilty. Have you found the two assholes?”
    The sheriff’s turn: “Seems the other perpetrators—”
    “Other perpetrators?” Pellam laughed.
    “—escaped. We searched for evidence but didn’t find any.” He turned to Pellam. “You weren’t real helpful when it came to the description, sir.”
    Pellam raised his hands. The chrome bracelets jangled with a dull sound. “Somebody threw a truckload of dirt in my face before they started working on me.”
    Moorhouse said, “Well, under the law, of course, we don’t need the others. We can prosecute the one we caught. And that’s you. Now, I’m taking off my mayor’s hat and putting on my magistrate’s.” He consulted an empty wall calendar. “I’m setting trial for one week. About bail—”
    “What do you mean, one week?”
    “I’m a very busy