by Paul W Papa
They weren’t the only ones there. Newshawks surrounded the place like ants at a picnic, likely waiting for Pierce. Mayer pulled in next to the man’s car. When Pierce stepped out of his Cadillac, not a hair was out of place. His car, Mayer figured, must have air conditioning. Pierce slid his lid onto his head and was immediately surrounded. The hired gun came and helped him wade through the crowd as reporters shouted their questions.
“Why did your partner commit suicide?” one yelled out.
“Will you still build?” asked another.
“Is it true Hawthorne left his part of the project to Vera Krupp?”
The question stopped Pierce in his tracks. Mayer guessed that nugget of information hadn’t yet been released to the public and wondered how this particular newshawk discovered it. He looked at the reporter, smiled, and moved on. It was Cassi Reyes, and when she didn’t get an answer from Pierce, she moved to Mayer.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as Mayer stepped out of his Hornet, closed the door, and replaced his own lid.
“I’m hoping for a quickie divorce,” he said and kept walking.
Trailer coaches were rolling rectangles, with painted aluminum panels, resting on tractor-trailer frames. They were becoming very popular as places to live. A home on wheels. Mayer wondered what they’d think of next. This particular one was set in place on some type of support system covered by lattice panels. An iron flight of stairs allowed entry.
Mayer followed Pierce up the stairs and inside. “How’d you get this thing down that road?” he asked.
“It was easier than you might think,” Pierce said. “We had a very large truck.”
“Must have been a doozy.”
The hired gun opened the door for them, then waited outside.
From the moment Mayer stepped inside the trailer, he felt it. The heaviness of death. It filled the place, overpowering the room and sitting still in the air. It was accompanied by an unearthly stench, and flies, hundreds of flies. Enough to make a pie—if one were so inclined. Pierce pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth. Mayer didn’t bother.
The trailer was set up like an office. Two desks rested on either side of an oval-shaped table that Mayer assumed was used for meetings. One desk—the one closest to the door—had a deep brown stain atop it, like melted chocolate, covering a set of blueprints. Mayer had seen it before. The color of dried blood. There was an impression of a head, or what was left of one. That seemed to be a favorite resting spot for the flies.
“This where you found him?”
“Yes,” Pierce said, handkerchief in place. He pointed. “In that chair, his head on the desk.”
“The door, was it locked when you arrived?”
“No,” Pierce said. “I told R. J. to keep the door locked when he was here alone, but he didn’t listen.”
Mayer walked behind the desk, being careful where he stepped. He looked down at the floor. Some of the blood had dripped down and pooled there. He wasn’t surprised. Head injuries always had so much blood. He looked at the other desk, mere feet away. Gray brain matter was splattered all over it and along the wall.
Mayer hated brains. Grotesque looking things.
“What are you planning to do with this thing?” Mayer asked, referring to the trailer.
“Burn it,” Pierce said. “After you prove Hawthorne was murdered.”
“You might not want to wait.”
Mayer opened the bottom drawer to the desk. He knew Hawthorne would have kept the gun there. People always seemed to keep guns there—in the bottom drawer. He didn’t know why. If he had an office, Mayer’s heater would be in the top drawer, easily within reach. He was rewarded for his effort with an open box of shells.
“Why did Hawthorne have a gun?”
“Coyotes,” Pierce said quickly, then added, “And protesters who might get out of hand.”
“You got one too?”
Pierce shook his head. “Don’t need one,” he said.
Mayer pointed to the door, referring to the man on the other side.
Pierce nodded.
Mayer took his handkerchief from his back pocket. He used it to pull the box of shells from the drawer. More than twelve were missing. “He fire his heater often?”
“Sure,” Pierce admitted. “To scare off coyotes.”
“That it?”
“That’s it,” Pierce said.
Mayer placed the shells back in the drawer.
“You two have a row?”
Pierce’s face soured. “Of course not, why would you ask that?”
“Just covering all angles.”
Mayer looked at the desk. According to the title block, the blueprints were of the proposed dude ranch. Various notes were scribbled in pencil on the top page. “Where was the note?” Mayer asked.
“There,” Pierce said, pointing to the corner of the desk.
Mayer examined the area. It was clean. “No blood on it?”
Pierce shook his head.
Mayer studied Pierce. He looked like a man used to getting his way, one for whom things always seemed to work out in his favor. He wondered why Pierce hadn’t just destroyed the note when he found it. It would have been easier. Simpler. People don’t always leave suicide notes. No one would have known. He decided to ask.
“Why didn’t you destroy the note when you found it?”
Pierce looked at Mayer with displeasure, taking his time to answer. “What kind of man do you take me for, Mr. Mayer?”
“A man who wasn’t alone, I’m guessing.”
“My man was with me,” he admitted.
“Just your man?” Mayer asked.
Pierce nodded. It wasn’t a convincing nod, and Mayer didn’t buy it.
“And why do you think this is my area of expertise?” Mayer asked.
“I don’t know that it is,” Pierce admitted. “All I know is that R. J. Hawthorne did not commit suicide and even if he did, he would never have left his part of the business to that kraut. Things happen at times. Things that can’t be explained. I’m told you’re the one people turn to when that occurs.”
It was something Mayer had come to accept. His town was indeed a hotspot for ghosts, goblins, and the like. In Vegas, everything bumped in the night. And why wouldn’t it? A city based on the most sinful needs of men couldn’t help but attract the corrupt, the depraved, and the degenerate, all leaving their smudge on the town. It’s why his parents moved here. The possibility for research was endless.
Mayer looked at the man hard. “If you want me to look into this, you’re going to have to be square with me.” He paused. “On the whole crop.”
Mayer waited while Pierce reviewed his options.
“Then you find my terms acceptable?” he finally asked.
“To a point,” Mayer said. “That much cabbage will buy a lot, but not everything and not forever.”
“All I need for you is to look into this. If you have additional expenses, you may submit them to me. As for other things, I have a man for that.”
“I imagine you do,” Mayer said.
Pierce returned his handkerchief to his pocket, then opened his wallet and removed the five bills he’d laid on the counter at Atomic Liquors. He offered them to Mayer, but Mayer didn’t take them. Instead, he just waited for Pierce’s answer.
Pierce let out a sigh. “R. J. hired a housekeeper,” he said. “She was here with us.”
“Before you got here?”
“No, she arrived when we did. We all walked in at the same time.”
“Still doesn’t explain why you didn’t just destroy the note. Tip your mitt, Pierce, or I walk.”
“She also works for Vera Krupp.”
Mayer did his best to hold in a laugh. “Well ain’t that a bite?” he said. But it was clear to him now. Pierce needn’t explain any further. The maid had seen the note. More importantly, she had seen what was written on it and if Pierce tried to destroy it, all it would do is create far more suspicio
n. Better to look for foul play, no matter how hard that road might prove to be.
Mayer took the bills and slid them into the pocket of his suit coat, then he continued giving the place the ups and downs. But there wasn’t anything there. Nothing at all. Nothing to suggest a man didn’t simply commit suicide. So why couldn’t he rid himself of the feeling there was something here—something that didn’t meet the eye?
“You usually get here first?” Mayer asked.
“Yes, R. J. typically comes in toward the early afternoon. That is, if he doesn’t sleep here.”
Mayer raised an eyebrow. “He do that often?”
“Often enough,” Pierce said shortly.
Mayer walked behind the desk and stood there for a moment, letting the environment engulf him. Trying to understand what would entice a man to stop making notes on a blueprint, pull out a gun, and send his tormented soul to the great beyond. Even more so, what would make a man fire six shots before he did the deed?
Mayer looked down at the floor. Six shots. Six empty shells found on the floor; having fallen after being ejected from the gun’s cylinder. He turned back to the question he’d had when he spoke to Fry. Who shoots six times, he wondered, then fills the gun anew with six more bullets? And then it hit him.
Mayer looked up at the wall directly across from him. The wall of an aluminum trailer. He stared at it so hard that Pierce, handkerchief back in place, turned to look as well.
“What are you looking at?” Pierce asked.
“A wall,” Mayer answered. “A wall with no holes in it.”
Five
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Pierce said.
Mayer examined the other walls and found no holes in any of them. He looked up at the ceiling. It was the same. “This trailer is made of aluminum,” he explained. “Not the strongest of metals. Nothing that would stop a stray pill from traveling right through to the outside. If someone sat here and pumped six shots before reloading, why aren’t there any holes?”
Pierce turned to the wall. It was clearly a question he hadn’t considered. It was a question the sheriff’s deputies must not have considered either—or they didn’t care.
“Was Hawthorne in the habit of keeping his old shells?” Mayer asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Pierce said, then added, “But I have to admit, I didn’t keep track of his weapon. Dirty things, guns.”
Unless someone else is holding them, Mayer thought. He stepped outside and took a deep breath. Pierce followed, removing his handkerchief when he hit the fresh air. The newshawks were still lined up. Pierce’s hired man and the deputy kept them at bay. Mayer walked to the rear of his Hornet and opened the trunk. Inside, artfully arranged, was an array of items that, had Mayer ever been pulled over by the authorities and had his trunk searched, would’ve been difficult to explain. Bottles of holy water, cases of bullets, some cast in silver, cartons of salt, knives with silver blades, aerosol cans, pistols of many different calibers, an iron club, flashlights, rope, a machete, and two shotguns. He also had multiple crosses—some made of silver, some iron—a Polaroid camera, and film.
He pulled out the camera, checked for film, and headed back inside. He stopped at the stairs when something on the ground caught his eye. Hoofprints. Horse hoofprints, to be exact. At least they looked like horse to him. Though, Mayer figured, they could have just as easily been burro.
Once he got inside, Mayer took pictures of everything in the room. What was there and what should have been there, but wasn’t. He stopped when he noticed hairs on the floor, bent down and picked them up.
“You got a dog?” he asked.
“Certainly not,” Pierce said through his handkerchief.
Mayer examined the hairs. They looked like dog to him, but what did he know? Brownish-gray, with just a touch of white. Mayer pulled out his handkerchief and placed the hairs inside, before folding the thing and sliding it back into his pocket.
“How many people entered this place this morning?”
“I would have no idea,” Pierce admitted. “There were the three of us and a myriad of police.”
“Sheriff’s deputies,” Mayer corrected. “I think we’re done here,” he said. “I’ll keep you informed.”
“We don’t have much time,” Pierce said. He reached in his pocket with his free hand and gave Mayer another of his cards. “Courts tend to act quickly in these matters.”
“See if you can stall them,” Mayer suggested. He was about to leave when he noticed a piece of Hermes luggage against the wall near the corner of the room. Horsehair canvas protected by Bordeaux leather around the edges and at all corners. Certainly not a coffee and donut piece.
“That yours?” Mayer asked.
Pierce shook his head.
“Hawthorne in the habit of keeping clothes here?” Mayer asked.
Pierce nodded. “He liked t0 hike the area,” he said through his handkerchief. “He kept a change of clothes and work boots.”
Mayer took the suitcase by its leather handle and lifted it onto the conference table. He popped the two latches and had a peek. Inside were clothes a man might indeed use for hiking. A long-sleeve button-down shirt with flaps over the pockets—Western style—and twist twill slacks accompanied a covert-cloth jacket. There was a pair of thick socks and dark brown engineer boots.
He packed everything back the way he’d found it, like his mother had taught him, closed the latches and rested the Hermes back on the floor. Everything inside the suitcase seemed right, but it was the outside of the thing which bothered him. Why, Mayer wondered, would a man as well off as Hawthorne not put his initials on an expensive piece of luggage?
After he returned the camera to his trunk, Mayer had a look around. Below the towering red sandstone peaks, the desert was awash with all manner of vegetation, each battling for a cherished spot in the landscape. A dark green Spanish bayonet poked out between two large, multicolored sandstone rocks that seemed to have been thrown by some angry god, landing haphazardly in the sand. The area abounded in blackbrush, cheesebush, and ephedra, also known as Mormon tea, on account of the Mormons who settled there in the 1800s dried and boiled its leaves, using it as both medicine and beverage.
The desert, while colorful in places, was a harsh mistress. It played with heat, inviting one in with warm comfort, then stealing away the breath. The majesty of the mountains hid the dangers that lurked below. Plants, like the spiny menodora, concealed long needle-like spines behind inviting white flowers. Cholla cacti, not quite as deceitful in their appearance, were spread throughout the area, reminding people of the dangers associated with venturing too far off any given trail—not that there were many to take. None of it, however, seemed to bother the thousands of burros, horses, and coyotes that make the place their home. Not to mention the birds, rabbits, lizards, snakes, and spiders.
Yet the desert had its own beauty, if one but looked. Purple mountains, like the ones in the famed song, bleeding into deep reds and bright pastels. Cacti that at certain times of the year displayed the most beautiful flowers and edible fruit between their prickly thorns.
Pierce and Hawthorne had chosen one such place. It was about as far away from the sins of Las Vegas as one could come and was also much cooler—by ten to fifteen degrees at times. In Mayer’s opinion, it was a good choice, though the thought of disturbing the natural landscape saddened him. While the place was secluded, it offered visions as far as one cared to look. And in one of those places was a dark horse, on top of which sat a rider in a white Western-style shirt, sporting an equally white cowboy hat. The horse and rider were both pointed in Mayer’s direction.
“Who’s that?” Mayer asked.
Pierce looked to the horizon. “That’d be Vera Krupp,” he said.
“She always this interested in the goings-on around here?”
“At times.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Mayer said, then got into his car.
He headed back up the pitted road, this time choosing to
leave his lid on the seat next to him. When he got to the end, in relatively one piece, he turned left and headed farther along the original road. About a mile up, he found another entrance to another dirt road on his left. A sign indicated the entrance to the Diamond V Ranch. Mayer took it.
The road was in better condition than the one leading to the trailer, but not by much. A little ways down, Mayer was forced to stop and wait for a train of burros to cross. They seemed to be on their own time schedule and were unaffected by his horn. Perhaps, Mayer thought, they knew something he didn’t.
The road eventually led to a sturdy ranch house resting upon a knoll that spread out to the right into a sloping acre of honest-to-goodness green grass—an oddity in the desert. Just to the left of the house was another spacious field that, instead of grass, was filled with cattle. Mayer had no idea it was a working ranch, nor did he know cattle could be raised in Southern Nevada. But if grass could be grown here, why not cows? He parked his Hornet on the side of the road, donned his cheaters and lid, and got out, then took the manicured trail leading up to the house.
It was an expansive place with rustic sandstone walls and a wooden shake-style roof. The front door opened to a covered porch that extended out at an angle from the eaves. Two large, mullioned windows on the left side of the door completed the facade. A structure to the right side of the house looked much like a barn, and was likely an add-on to the original at some point, its deep-red siding a fitting augment to the sandstone.
Mayer was about to make his way to the rear of the house when he was approached by an elderly man with a broad nose and round a leathery face that had been dried and tanned in the desert sun one too many times. He was clothed in dungarees and a well-worn Western-style shirt. His eyes were covered by cheaters, a furry caterpillar had taken residence on his upper lip, and his gray hair, which had likely once been black, was tied in braids and laid across either shoulder. Mayer guessed he was Paiute, but it wasn’t much of a guess as the Southern Paiute was the local tribe. He was perfectly in place here, right up to the wide-brimmed hat atop his head.