Boobytrap

by Bill Pronzini

  No way the SFPD bomb squad could have swept his house since the last time we talked, I was thinking. They’re damned thorough normally and they’d be extra careful in the case of a public official. Dixon called them off. Why, when there’s still a chance, however slight, that Latimer set a backup boobytrap there? Why doesn’t he want Marian home?

  Only one explanation I could think of. And I didn’t like anything about it.

  This one: Latimer had contacted him by phone sometime between Marian’s call and mine just now, told him he had the boy. Which meant Latimer was still fixated on finishing his vendetta and was using Chuck as a lever to force a meeting with Dixon. And Pat, the damn fool, was letting himself be pried; believing he could work a trade, probably—his life for his son’s—with a lunatic who had already murdered three people.

  FOURTEEN

  BY NINE-THIRTY DEEP MOUNTAIN LAKE looked like a place under siege.

  The first county law arrived in a four-car caravan, seven minutes after I talked to Dixon and two minutes after I finished stowing the .38 Colt Bodyguard inside my car; there was no longer any reason for me to be packing heat, and it’s never a good idea, anyway, for a private detective to walk around armed in the midst of an official crisis situation. Another green-and-white cruiser showed up shortly afterward, and two more within ten minutes of that one. None of them came with sirens or flashers, but the sheer numbers alerted the local population and word spread fast.

  The man in charge was Sheriff Ben Rideout, a lanky guy in his fifties with a military bearing and a quiet, no-nonsense manner. He was a little stiff with me at first, either because I was a stranger or because of what I did for a living, but he didn’t hassle me and it wasn’t long before my own professionalism eased things between us.

  His first question to me was, “Where’s Donald Latimer?”

  “Gone. Since about six-fifteen this morning.”

  “So now we’ve got a fugitive. Why weren’t we notified?”

  “Just confirmed a few minutes ago. I called Pat Dixon and he’s handling notification—county, state, and federal.”

  “Why call him for that?”

  “Because Latimer’s not alone,” I said. “He’s got Dixon’s son with him.” I laid out the basic details for him, nothing more. I was not sure yet what to do about my suspicions—the best way to handle the situation for Chuck’s sake, for Pat’s.

  “Bad,” Rideout said, “very bad. Not much we can do about that part of it now. Latimer won’t still be hanging around Plumas County, that’s for sure. What can you tell me about the explosive device in the Dixon cabin?”

  “Not much. If he and I are right, it’s wired into his tackle box and it’s the frag type—fishhooks, lots of them, and Christ knows what else.”

  “Dynamite? Plastic explosive?”

  “Not sure. Probably the same or similar to the previous two bombs in San Francisco—”

  “Black powder,” one of the other officers said. The second-in-command, a youngish lieutenant named Dewers.

  “Right, black powder.”

  “How much pucker power?” Rideout asked me.

  “Again, probably along the lines of the other two. A concentrated load, designed to do the most damage to the person who triggers it.”

  “So not enough to blow up the entire cabin. Or any of the neighboring cabins, maybe set off a forest fire.”

  “Doubtful, judging from the size and weight of the box.”

  “Okay. That’s pretty much what we were led to believe, but I wanted your take. You’ve seen and handled the thing, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Rideout called to his driver, “Sam, what’s the latest ETA on the Sacramento bomb unit?” Evidently his radio had a patch through to the incoming helicopter.

  The driver checked, called back, “Thirty minutes.”

  “We better get a move on.”

  He deployed his officers, a dozen men and two women. One unit to a meadow a third of a mile east of the lake to wait for the chopper; I heard Judson say that the meadow had been used once before, a few years back, by a medivac helicopter to bring out a boating accident victim. Two units to keep order at the resort, which was already attracting summer residents and guests like flies swarming to spoiled meat. Four units to evacuate and secure the danger zone—all the cottages between the resort and the Dixon cabin, in order to ensure a clear road, and any occupied cottages within a thousand yards west of the Dixons’. Rideout and Dewers would make sure nobody got anywhere near the device until the bomb squad arrived. The sheriff gave me the option of going along with them and I took it. It was better than hanging and rattling at the resort.

  I sat in the backseat of the sheriffs cruiser. Faces in the parking lot and along the road stared in at me as we moved out, the blank, hostile stares citizens always give prisoners. I felt like one, sitting there behind the thick mesh screen that separated front and rear seats. Guilt, mainly—and the kind of trapped feeling you get when you’re at the mercy of others. I kept thinking that I ought to say something to Rideout about a possible contact between Latimer and Dixon, and I kept not doing it. It was only conjecture on my part, for one thing. And more important, I wasn’t convinced I had a moral right to take that step. Chuck was Dixon’s son—and I couldn’t even be sure of what I’d do if the boy were mine.

  When we passed the green-shingled cottage Latimer had occupied, I roused myself long enough to point it out to the sheriff. He nodded without turning his head. “We’ll check it out later. First things first.”

  Nobody was hanging around in the immediate vicinity of the Dixon cabin. That helped the evacuation and area-securing process move along quickly and smoothly. The Plumas County deputies were well trained; they had bystanders moved out to Judson’s or safe behind police lines and the road blocked off and empty by the time we heard the chopper coming in to the east.

  I stood with Dewers and a couple of the other officers behind the yellow-tape barrier on the cabin’s east side, waiting for the bomb techs to be ferried in from the landing site. Every time I looked at the cabin it was as though I had X-ray vision: I could see that tackle box sitting there on the floor against the wall. I could feel the weight of it, a kind of ghost-prickle on my fingers, and the careless swing of it against my leg as I walked, and the slight jarring way in which I’d set it down. Any of those movements could have initiated it. The memory, and the thought that neither Chuck nor I would have known what hit us, summoned up fresh beads of sweat.

  It took about fifteen minutes for the two transport cruisers to arrive. They slid past the barrier, rolled to a stop in front of the cabin. From what I could see at the distance, there were three techs and they were traveling light from necessity. Bomb disarmament these days is a highly sophisticated process, as I’d learned from a former SFPD technician I’d gotten to know in the course of an investigation. Electronic gadgetry played a big role in it; so did such state-of-the-art equipment as remote-controlled and track-driven robots outfitted with X rays and TV cameras, a thing called a “disruptor” that shoots water or slugs with pinpoint accuracy to break apart a bomb’s circuitry, and total containment vessels inside of which even a high-charge device can be safely detonated.

  But apparatus like that is bulky, made and outfitted for ground transport. These techs had to utilize portable equipment because of a helicopter’s limited cargo capacity; what they unloaded from the cruisers, as near as I could tell, included a small X-ray machine and both body armor and a Galt bomb suit, an outfit made by the British that resembles a marine diving suit—heavy helmet and breastplate, an antiblast shield for the face. So this crew would be handling Latimer’s tackle-box boobytrap the old-fashioned way, up close and deadly. They’d “surgically” disable it if they could, to keep everything intact so it could be used as evidence in court. More likely they’d decide the safest method was to carefully dump the thing in the lake. Immersion in water will neutralize most explosive devices, among them the kinds built with black p
owder.

  Once the techs were ready to enter the cabin, the deputies in the cruisers drove out of harm’s way; so did Rideout, who’d gone up there to confer with the squad commander. He brought an order to move everybody even farther back, which put us around a bend in the road and out of viewing range. Just as well. I did not care to be watching if anything happened.

  “Now we wait,” Rideout said when we were reestablished. “And it’s going to be a while.”

  Dewers said, “Waiting is one of my least favorite activities. How about if Sam and I go check out Latimer’s cottage?”

  “Okay, do it.”

  I said, “All right if I go along? I’m not much good at waiting, either.” Understatement. I was so keyed up I felt ready to jump out of my skin.

  Rideout and the lieutenant exchanged glances. Dewers shrugged and said, “No objection. He’s been around Latimer. Might be evidence there that’ll mean something to him but wouldn’t to us.”

  We piled into Dewers’ cruiser, the sheriffs driver, Sam, behind the wheel and me in the prisoner’s seat again. None of us had any comment to make until we were rolling. Then, on impulse, I leaned forward and said to Dewers, “Mind if I ask a favor?”

  “Well, you can ask.”

  “Check with your dispatcher, see what’s on the air about Latimer.”

  “If there was any news on him or the boy, we’d have been notified.”

  “I’d just like to know for sure that both state and federal agencies have word on the kidnapping.”

  “Bound to, by now.” He slid around on the seat and frowned at me through the mesh. “Unless you think there’s some reason Dixon didn’t follow through.”

  Good man, this Dewers. Sharp. I said, hedging, “I’m just edgy, that’s all. Would you check?”

  He turned front again, reached for the radio handset. I listened to him and to the crackly voice of the Quincy dispatcher. And what I heard made me even more antsy.

  “The APB on Latimer’s still in effect,” the dispatcher said, “but there’s nothing out on a kidnapping. We thought you had the perp in custody or contained up there. We’ve been waiting for a communication.”

  Oversight glitch by Rideout or Dewers; the lieutenant didn’t respond to it. He said, “You sure there’s nothing on the kidnap?”

  “Affirmative, Lieutenant.”

  “Contact Sacramento CID, tell them that Latimer and the Dixon boy have been missing since six-fifteen this A.M. Tell them ... Wait a minute.” Dewers swiveled his head. “What kind of vehicle is Latimer driving?”

  I told him, added the license number.

  “Description of the boy?”

  I gave him that in one sentence.

  He relayed the information, then told the dispatcher to ask Sacramento CID if they’d heard anything from Dixon or the San Francisco D.A.’s office since his call for the bomb squad. “Get back to me as soon as you can,” he said, and signed off, and swung around to look at me again. “All right, what’s going on with Dixon?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “You must have some idea.”

  I hesitated. My suspicions had a solid basis now, but there was still the moral dilemma. And that was a hurdle I couldn’t seem to get past, at least not until I talked to Marian. I said, “Stress, maybe. Lot of pressure on him.”

  “He’s not a boozer, is he?”

  “Not the kind you mean, no.”

  Dewers seemed about to make another suggestion—the right one, like as not—but our arrival at Latimer’s rented A-frame kept him from voicing it. All he said as we turned down the driveway was, “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Sam parked alongside the dogwood bushes. Dewers told him to wait for the dispatcher to radio back, then got out and released me. It seemed too quiet here, almost preternaturally so, after all the hubbub around the Dixon cabin. The pine-sweet air felt skimpy in my lungs, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in it.

  “If the front door’s locked,” Dewers said, “we’ll each take a side and check other doors and windows. If everything’s locked, then we’ll break in. In any case, I’ll go in first, alone, and see what’s what. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  “Stay here until I give you a yell.”

  I nodded, and he went up onto the platform porch. He didn’t draw the .357 Magnum holstered at his side, but he closed fingers around the handle as he reached out with his other hand to try the latch. It wasn’t locked. I saw him ease the door open partway, then all the way—

  The blast, as concussively loud as a small bomb, blew him backward and off his feet. He hit the planks on hips and shoulders, bounced, skidded. I’d been leaning against the cruiser’s rear fender; I was off it and running toward him before the echoes faded and he came to rest in a twisted back sprawl. Behind me I heard the cruiser’s door slap open, Sam yell something in a stricken voice. I slowed then, but not because of him.

  Dewers wasn’t moving; he’d never move again. His chest was a gaping red-black ruin, little wisps of grayish vapor rising from it, blood spattered up over his arms and face, blood slicking the boards where he’d skidded. More vapor came dribbling out through the open cabin door.

  My stomach heaved; I had to turn away to keep my gorge down. Sam ran up and I heard him say, “Oh Jesus!” with as much awed reverence as a priest in prayer. I took a couple of loose steps away from the body, to where I could look in through the doorway.

  Two chairs, both toppled. Hand clamps on them and on the floor. Lengths of string and thin wire, one piece of wire attached to the inside of the doorknob, another to the trigger of the weapon that had recoiled halfway across the room. Rigged to fire at point-blank range, after the Magnum shell had first been reloaded with black powder. The room was smoky and stank of cordite.

  Now I knew why Latimer had stolen the Mossberg .410 shotgun.

  I knew something else, too, standing there shaking with sickness and fury. Knew it beyond any doubt.

  This boobytrap had been meant for me.

  FIFTEEN

  THEY KEPT ME ON THE SCENE FOR MORE than half an hour. It could have been much longer, but after the first rush and barrage of questions from a grim and shaken Sheriff Rideout they lost interest in me. They swarmed over the cottage, looking for any pieces of Latimer that he might’ve left behind. He was their focus now; even the movements of the bomb squad had become secondary to the brutal slaying of one of their own.

  I went down by the lake, where I would not have to look at the blanket-shrouded body of Lieutenant Dewers, and waited restlessly for them to let me go back to the resort. Inside I was still seething and strung tight. I hadn’t told Rideout about Dixon’s failure to put out state and federal warrants on Latimer; neither had Sam, as far as I knew. For the time being, that fact had gotten lost in the aftermath of Dewers’s violent death. I hoped it would stay lost until I could talk to Marian, try to get her husband on the phone—make my decision one way or the other.

  The moral issue was only part of it now. The shotgun boobytrap and Dewers’s death had made it personal. Latimer had almost ended my life twice in two days, once inadvertently and once with premeditation. That shotgun charge had been intended for me, all right. I was supposed to be the one lying up there with his chest torn to bloody shreds. He’d hated me since our first meeting, and never mind that the reasons were irrational. Feared me, too, because of who and what I was. So he’d added me to his hit list. Figured I’d be the first to come snooping around his cottage when I found him and Chuck gone, and built his boobytrap accordingly. He’d almost guessed right, too; I’d come close to opening the front door myself earlier. Close.

  The only reason I was still alive was luck and his psychosis. He’d had plenty of opportunity to take me out with a gun or knife or blunt instrument, but he preferred to do his killing at a distance, with detachment and methodical prearrangement and no threat to himself. The coward’s way. Nils Ostergaard must’ve been an unavoidable necessity. And it must’ve bothered the hell out of hi
m when it was done.

  I stared out at the lake, thinking that I hated Latimer right now more than he could possibly hate me. That I’d like nothing better than an active role in bringing him down before he harmed Pat or Chuck or anyone else; how good it would feel to get close enough to spit in his face. But that was as far as it went. There was no desire for violence in what I felt, just a cold determination that was every bit as personal as a blood vendetta. Violence all around me, aimed at me, but none of it had penetrated. I was like a chunk of stone inside a protective force field: it couldn’t hurt me or turn me into an instrument of violence myself. What I’d thought and felt out at Chuck’s Hole yesterday morning was not a situational reaction but an absolute truth. I was all through with killing or hurting any living thing, except as a last line of self-defense. It was simply not in me anymore to become an avenger, or even a shadow of one.

  So I sat there and hated Latimer in my own way and waited for somebody to come and either question me some more or set me free. It wasn’t Rideout but a uniformed deputy who finally walked down, which told me even before he spoke that they were through with me for the time being. “Sheriff says for you to go on back to the resort,” he said. He didn’t offer to drive me; neither did anyone else. That was all right, too. Physical activity was what I needed at the moment, a way to work off some of the tension.

  When I reached Judson’s I found things to be pretty quiet. Several cars were in evidence, a county cruiser with two officers inside blocking the road, but most of the residents and guests seemed to be jammed into the cafe. Three stood in front of the grocery half, one of them Fred Dyce; he glanced my way and then turned aside—embarrassed about last night, maybe, if he even remembered what’d happened. The quiet wouldn’t last long, I thought. Just until the media started showing up and the news about Latimer and the kidnapping and Dewers’s death got spread around. Then we’d have Carnival. That was as certain as death itself.