by Don Travis
Paul basked silently in reflected glory until we arrived home. As usual we went around back to enter the house through the kitchen. Paul once asked me why we took this route, and I told him it saved my creaky old bones from having to maneuver the steps at the front porch. The real reason was the back way was often the nearest. Paul’s Charger in front of me on the drive rendered that false. But a pattern is a pattern.
As Paul keyed the back lock, I caught movement in a reflection in a kitchen window. I instantly shoved him to the ground and dropped onto my back, clawing for my pistol as I fell. The boom of a weapon barely preceded the pane of glass shattering where Paul stood a millisecond earlier.
Chapter 19
TWO MORE gunshots reverberated around the yard, but I saw enough to know the gunman was firing wildly now that I had my little .25 caliber Colt Junior in hand. He disappeared around the garage as I got off a shot. I scrambled to my feet and charged for the back gate, ignoring Paul’s cries of protest. He didn’t know what the shooter carried, but he knew my weapon was a wildly inaccurate and underpowered peashooter.
By the time I reached the alley, the ambusher had disappeared. Which backyard did he cut through? The house to my left had a dog, and it wasn’t barking. The shooter had crossed the alley and cut through someone’s property to the street behind us. I vaulted a fence and raced through a neighbor’s yard. Upon reaching the street I saw no one but heard a retreating car motor. Not a racing one, just a normal purr.
Paul and I split up to knock on every door in the neighborhood. No one I talked to had seen a stranger in the area. Not surprising. At this time of day, around 2:30 p.m., there was little foot traffic.
When Paul and I met at the house after our search, we sat on the front steps and talked things over. He’d had no better luck than I had. I expected Paul to be shaken, but he wasn’t. He was mad.
“Second time the bastard’s come for me.”
“I suspect he was here for both of us this time.”
“Somebody doesn’t like us working on this case.”
“Unless you’ve been chasing someone’s girlfriend… or boyfriend.”
He gave me a look. “I haven’t. You?”
“Nope. So do you know what that means?”
“What?”
“Somebody just made a mistake.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Don’t worry, someone already has.”
A few minutes later a patrol car with flashing lights arrived, followed by the brown Ford I was expecting. Gene got out of the Ford looking gruff. Gruff was his cover for caring.
“Who’d you piss off this time?” he called as he approached. The officer who’d just arrived stood aside deferentially.
“Any number of suspects,” I said.
“I’ve told you time and again, you’re a pain in the ass. The shooter wasn’t Wick Pillsner. According to my man keeping watch on him, he’s in his office on East Lomas.”
“Somebody he hired,” Paul said. “Just like the bozo who T-boned me.”
“Likely,” Gene said. “You guys all right?”
“Wouldn’t be if Vince hadn’t seen a reflection in the kitchen window.”
“See who it was?”
I shook my head. “Didn’t even see the car he drove off in. We canvassed all the neighbors, but your guys can do it again.”
“So he parked himself in the alley and waited for you to come home, and nobody noticed?”
The older neighborhoods in Albuquerque had drivable alleyways behind the houses. The newer areas forewent such conveniences as the price of land escalated. Their backyards simply met at a fence line.
“Most people around here are retirees, Gene. Lots of folks napping this time of day. I could sit behind my garage, and nobody would spot me. But no, I think he probably picked us up on the way home, parked his car on the street behind me, and hoofed it to the back of the house.”
“What kind of detective are you? You didn’t notice a car tailing you?”
“Don’t think he was behind me long enough for me to spot him as a threat.”
Gene’s officers did no better with the neighbors than we had. His team retrieved the spent bullet embedded in our kitchen wall and hauled it to the forensics lab on North Second Street. They’d confirm it was a .38 slug and check to see if it came from a weapon used in a previous crime but would learn little else. The cops didn’t locate the other two projectiles, confirming my suspicion the would-be assassin, rattled when he failed to hit either of us, shot wild.
“The shooter was new to this, wasn’t he?” Paul asked.
“I’d say so. That tells me something too.”
“What?” Gene and Paul asked simultaneously.
“I can’t see Wick hiring a rank amateur to try to get at us. And isn’t it a little late in the game? We’ve already found two men he killed. Pierce’s killing I understand. Somebody was trying to stop the dam from breaking. But it’s broken now, so the attack on Paul and this one on the two of us doesn’t make sense.”
“It does one thing,” Gene said.
“What?” Paul asked.
“Sows doubt,” Gene answered. “BJ’s making a good point. Maybe sending us running to find answers will raise questions about what we’ve found.”
“Would you repeat that?” Paul said.
“He means send us on a wild goose chase,” I explained. “But if you get a good fingerprint or biological information off what came out of the mine shaft, there won’t be any doubt.”
“Already have. Fingerprints anyway. Badly degraded but usable. And they’re Wick’s.”
“You have his prints on file?” Paul asked.
Gene grinned. “Thank God for the college years. Wick got drunk with a bunch of frat boys, and when a brawl broke out, everyone was hauled to the station. They were released, but we still have his prints.”
“Where did you find the print from the dump site?” I asked.
“Prints, actually. One on the Blazer’s dashboard. The other one on an inside driver’s side door handle on the Crown Victoria. He tried to wipe everything clean but missed those two.”
Paul couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice. “Then we’ve got him.”
“Maybe a little closer but probably about a year away.”
“Huh?”
“Gene means it’ll be a long time before this comes to trial, and a defense lawyer’s going to try to explain those prints away.”
When his team was finished, Gene couldn’t resist a little BJ sniping. He held up the evidence bag holding my little Colt. Since I had fired at the assailant, Gene was taking the weapon in. “What were you gonna do if you hit him with this? Put a Band-Aid on him and give him an aspirin? Crap, where’s your Ruger?”
“In the trunk of the Impala, where it usually is.”
“Next time just spit at him!”
THE FOLLOWING morning Hazel greeted someone entering the outer office. A moment later she stuck her head in the door to my inner sanctum, her owl-eyes expressing surprise.
“Wick Pillsner wants to see you.”
I closed the file on the desk before me. “Send him in.”
I rose as the balding, hawk-nosed man entered my office, offering a hand in greeting. Accepting it, I regarded the fiftyish jock refusing to give in to flab. The gray in the hair and the wrinkles on the face were there, but so were the muscles in his arms. How much time did this guy spend in the gym? I gestured him to a chair as I pressed a button on my digital recorder, which lay on my desk. He showed how sharp he was by agreeing we probably needed a recording of the visit and asked for a copy.
“BJ,” he got down to business. “I understand you’re the prime mover behind the renewed investigation of the VPMR disaster. I also understand you believe I was behind the looting of the company.”
Albuquerque has always been a gossipy town, but this guy’s connections went far beyond simple chin-wagging. Some of his contacts probably reached into APD. “I’ve not exp
ressed any such conclusion publicly.”
“You’re too careful for that. But I’m assured that is your conviction.”
“And if it is?” I asked. Doubtless he knew exactly what Paul and I had been doing. But that was not why he was here. He’d come to see what I knew about the investigation, pick up information so he could prepare a defense against it.
“Then I’m here to say you’re wrong.”
“Okay, you’ve put your denial on record. But you’re in the wrong place. Now that Barron Voxlightner’s and Walther Stabler’s bodies have been located, APD has taken charge. You need to see Lieutenant Gene Enriquez and go on record with him.”
“And I will,” he said, regarding me coolly through frameless bifocals. “But you’re the one who found them. You broke it open, so I wanted to tell you face-to-face… your old coach isn’t a killer.”
“Low blow, Wick. Leave our past out of it. People do things and need to be held accountable regardless of what or who they’ve been in the past.”
“Fair enough. But I want to look you in the eye and tell you I’ve made no attempt on you or your associate Paul Barton.”
“I hope that’s true. But you need to be in Lieutenant Enriquez’s office, not mine.”
He thanked me for my time and departed, leaving me to puzzle over the visit. He was mining for information, but he could have done this with a phone call. No. He was trying to deliver a message. And the only sensible thing was his denying the attempts on Paul and me had been his doing. Somehow I didn’t have a problem accepting that at face value.
That was the moment I decided to change the focus of my investigation. Who made two attempts to harm Paul and me? And why? Could they have been red herrings as Gene suggested? Possibly. But the Voxlightner case was firmly in APD’s hands now. Paul and I found Belhaven’s reason for reopening the investigation and used it to expose Wick’s role in the scandal. We’d found the two missing men. All that remained now was for APD’s lab to process the evidence and for the FBI, who’d gotten interested after the hard work was done, to trace the missing money.
If Wick wasn’t responsible for the attacks on Paul and me, who was and why? We weren’t involved in any cases together other than this Voxlightner thing. There was Belhaven’s killing. But they were one and the same case. Or were they? Logic said yes, but logic wasn’t logic until all the p’s and q’s were known.
I thought over Wick’s visit again. He didn’t exhibit the demeanor of a desperate man. But many perps didn’t until they were on the way to prison. No. He was more like a man delivering a message. Charlie would say Wick was merely spreading bug dust to cloud our vision, but I wasn’t sure this was his intent.
Was he telling me he hadn’t killed John Pierce Belhaven? Gene claimed I sometimes got caught up in weird theories roaming around in my own head. And that was true. But I always maintained a man shouldn’t fall in love with a concept to the point where he refused to lift his gaze and look around occasionally.
Dorothy originally tasked me to find Belhaven’s killer, although that was really a back door to finding out what happened to her son. Even so, an assignment was an assignment. I’d originally tackled it from the old Voxlightner scandal approach. Now I would try it another way and see if it led me back to Hardwick Pillsner.
PAUL WAS nonplussed when I told him that evening that I was returning to the Belhaven household to ask my questions anew.
“Why? It’s clear Wick killed Pierce to keep him from doing what we did… expose him.”
“That’s not totally clear to me. Possible, yes. Highly probable? Again, yes. But what’s the harm in working the case from a new standpoint while APD unearths the evidence to convict him?”
“Harm? I’ve already written and sold three stories about this case. And I wrapped it up with a neat bow.”
I knew what bothered him. He’d allowed me to read the three pieces and responded to all my suggestions except the last one. I told him it was a bit premature to file the third and final pretrial story. But the editor pushed him for copy, and he’d submitted it anyway.
“What’s more important? Your journalistic reputation or finding a killer? Besides if we turn up evidence leading elsewhere, that should enhance your standing, not diminish it. You fought the battle to the clear and evident end.”
His look told me he didn’t buy into my conclusion. I’d anticipated playing with Pedro that evening, but the dragon slept quietly on his master’s chest throughout the night.
Breakfast the next morning was a subdued affair, but I could see he was thinking things over, not sulking. Like all of us, he pouted on occasion, but it never lasted long or went too deep. He agreed to accompany me to the Belhaven house after the kitchen was straightened.
Except for a brief good morning chat with Mrs. Wardlow who happened to be sweeping her sidewalk when we emerged from the house, we were silent on the four-block walk. Sarah Thackerson answered the doorbell. Her smile of greeting faltered before claiming her face again.
“Mr. Vinson, Paul. Nice to see you again. Are you still at it? I understood everything was settled.”
“It’s not wrapped up until a jury says so, and we’re a long way from that,” I said. “Is anyone else around?”
“Just Spencer. At least I hear his lawn mower, so he must still be here. He comes and goes on a schedule only he knows.”
“Neither Harris nor Melanie are here?” I asked, referring to Pierce’s son and daughter.
She shook her head. “No, although Harrison will be here later. He decided to move into the house. I guess he’s overcome his dislike of his father.” She looked stricken to have said such a thing aloud.
“I’d heard they didn’t get along,” I responded. “Do you mind if we come in for a few minutes? There are some questions we need to ask.”
She backed away. “Certainly. Let’s go to the office. That’s about the only place I go in the house. It’s not like when Pierce… uh, Mr. Belhaven was here.”
“I understand.” Once we were seated opposite her desk, I brought the conversation back to Pierce and Harris. “What was at the bottom of the trouble between father and son?”
“I don’t like to gossip. Besides I don’t know what caused the rift. Sometimes little things got on Mr. Belhaven’s nerves.”
“Like?” Paul asked. Perhaps he was coming out of his funk.
“Like it bothered him that Harrison wouldn’t settle down and get married.”
I wasn’t willing to let go of the other angle yet. “Was there anything unusual about Mrs. Belhaven’s death?”
Sarah glanced at me, a look of surprise on her face. “As I understand it, she died of lung cancer. She was a heavy smoker.”
“When was that?”
“August 2006.”
I allowed an obvious frown to claim my features. “I thought you told us earlier you came to work for Belhaven in 2005. Wouldn’t you have known what killed her?”
Her left hand flew to her throat and fiddled with her collar. “I was still attending the University of New Mexico pretty much full-time back then. So I simply did my work and went home. I wasn’t privy to family affairs at the time.”
“I see.” Clever response. I switched directions on her. “Has the estate been settled?”
“Oh no. I understand the process will take a year or so. But I’ve received my bequest, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That was fast.”
Sarah licked her cupid’s bow lips. “The lawyer handed out a few preliminary checks at the reading of the will. He’s the executor of the estate, you see.”
“He’s getting the smaller bequests out of the way. Unusual but not unheard of. Did Spencer get his $250,000?”
When she nodded, I continued, “Your insurance as well?”
Sarah didn’t try to hide her surprise. “You know about the policy? I guess everything’s public when somebody gets murdered. Mr. Tibedeau interviewed me but said it would take a few weeks until the claim was paid. Mr.
Tibedeau’s the insurance company’s investigator.”
“We’ve met,” Paul said.
“Did Tibedeau indicate there’d be a problem paying the insurance because Mr. Belhaven’s killer isn’t known?” Paul continued his questioning.
“But he is known. It’s Mr. Pillsner. And I hear you two are the ones who exposed him.”
I beat my buddy to the punch. “While Mr. Pillsner is doubtless responsible for a lot of things, killing Pierce Belhaven might not be one of them.”
Sarah’s brown eyes widened. She put a hand to her cheek. “Oh my goodness! Then who?”
“Maybe someone who profited from Pierce’s death,” Paul suggested.
I glanced at him. Maybe upstaging him in his developing professional life was harder for him to accept than I thought. We’d have to have a heart-to-heart.
Sarah muddied those waters. “Pierce made a number of bequests in his will. He was a very generous man.”
Paul was relentless. “But not everyone has a life policy paying double in case of violent death.”
“Are you suggesting I killed Pierce? That’s ridiculous. I was on my way back from visiting my family in Bisbee. I spent the night Pierce was killed at the Super 8 Motel in Las Cruces. You can check my registration.”
“I will,” he snapped.
Paul wasn’t making questioning Sarah Thackerson any easier. I slapped my knee to command attention. “We already have. And you are absolutely correct. You were registered in room 201 at the Super 8 on West Bataan Memorial. Checked in at 4:30 p.m.”
Paul wouldn’t leave it alone. “You coulda made it home in another three hours or so.”
Hostility coarsened her throaty voice. “I don’t travel well. I was tired, so I checked in for a dinner and a good rest. Any crime in that?”
“Sarah,” I said, “who do you think killed Belhaven?”
“Mr. Pillsner would be my first choice. He had a reason, didn’t he?”
“If you picked a second choice, who would it be?”
“Harrison, I guess. He hated his father.”