Читать книгу Five-minute Mysteries 2 - Ken Weber - Страница 14

9

"Odd Billy" and the Backpack

Sharnell Yates made an elaborate fuss of pulling down the sun visor and adjusting it to keep the early morning sun out of her eyes. She fiddled even longer with the little portable radio taped onto the dash of Schomberg’s sole police car. When the dial finally hit on the local weather report, she listened with head cocked to one side, as though it was the most important communication of her day.

What Sharnell was doing – and she freely admitted it to herself – was anything that would keep her from having to make small talk with “Odd Billy” Sniderman in the passenger seat beside her. Not that Billy was a chatterbox but he was unpredictable – and explosive. After two tours in Vietnam, “Odd Billy” Sniderman had come home to Schomberg with invisible wounds deep in his soul.

“The sun we’ve got this morning is going to stay right up there all by itself. No clouds, you lucky people,” the radio host was saying. “Pretty much a repeat of yesterday. Good stiff breeze out of the west-southwest again, and that’ll keep the humidity down, so you can really enjoy the day. High of 76 degrees, or if you’re one of our listeners just over the border, that’s about 23 Celsius and ...”

“S’nother mile. Keep straight.” Billy spoke for the first time since they’d left the town limits. He was sitting rigidly in the seat, eyes fixed on some vague point ahead of the car.

Sharnell nodded. “’Kay,” she said, grateful for what appeared to be his calm. She wasn’t really afraid, but there was no denying her uneasiness, and it made her miss the rest of the weather report. Billy had never actually harmed anyone, to her knowledge, or done anything blatantly illegal, at least by Schomberg standards. A larger community might have charged him with vagrancy, or perhaps found reason by now to force him into a treatment program, but small towns can be quite accepting of strange behavior, especially from one of their own. That was pretty much the case with Billy.

There was no question he’d earned his nickname. “Odd Billy” was often seen holding animated conversations with unseen companions. The look in his eyes was, well, scary, a feature that somehow seemed a bit more frightening because of his tendency to suddenly appear behind people without making a sound. No one, it seemed, ever heard him coming. Then there was his persistent habit of going into the stores on Main Street through the back door; in Schomberg, where nobody used locks in the daytime, that was easy to do. Perhaps the oddest thing about “Odd Billy” was the expression on his face. Sharnell had known him more than thirty years and had never once seen it change.

He spoke once more, again without moving. “Loggin’ road runs off to the right after those trees up there. ’At’s where you turn.”

Sharnell could see the road he was referring to, and turned onto it a few seconds later.

“What were you doing way up here yesterday, Billy?” she asked.

“Walkin’.”

She was going to ask why, but thought better of it. He’d already agreed to show her the camping spot where he’d found the backpack, so for now she felt it best not to push. Just before dusk the evening before, Billy had come in the back door of the Blue Spot Café with the pack over one shoulder. Visiting the café was pretty much part of his routine: he often came in after the supper crowd had gone, to cadge leftover fries, and the owner usually obliged. Normally, the backpack would not have raised eyebrows, except that Sharnell had been asking questions on Main Street much of the day yesterday. The police down in Missoula had asked her to look around for a couple who’d been camping in the Schomberg area and were overdue on their return. Sharnell had talked to the town’s eateries and outfitters, as well as several other likely stores.

They were three minutes or so along the logging road now. It ran straight, but the surface was rough, and Billy had a hard time maintaining his rigid pose.

“Up there,” he said, suddenly pushing his hand in front of Sharnell’s face to point out her side window. “Smelled smoke down here ’n’ went up t’see. ’S’about coupla hunnert yards or so. Fools!”

Before he got into the car, Billy had told Sharnell he’d found the pack left behind at a campsite. During the telling he’d become quite upset over the fact that the campers had left the site without putting out their fire completely.

When the two of them reached the camping spot, it appeared much as Billy had said. The remains of a campfire were strewn in front of flattened grass where a tent had been pitched. Sharnell had to get to her knees to see them, but it didn’t take her long to find the holes the tent pegs had made. She focused the camera she’d brought with her, and began to shoot the scene from various angles. Just like fiddling with the sun visor and the radio, taking pictures gave her something to do while she worked out her strategy. Clearly, she was going to have to challenge Billy with the flaw in his explanation of how he found the backpack. As well, she was going to have to have the campsite examined more thoroughly, and then she’d have to organize a search party. All that had to be arranged from town, however. For now, she felt it best to take Billy back to Schomberg before confronting him.

?

What is the flaw in Billy’s explanation of how he found the backpack?

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