by Dakota Kahn
“Oh, Woody, you’re a peach,” I said, leaning against him and giving him a peck on the cheek. He blushed a little, and smiled.
“Well, heck. Just doing what’s right. Sort of. Look, whatever you want to do, you have to do it right quick.”
“I just want to see the place where it happened. The body’s been taken down, right?” I said, my spine going all popsicle when I thought of having to see James Wendover, all… dead and hanging.
“Yeah, cut him down just after Liz came through. Seems to me she did her job awful fast, too,” Woody said, giving me a meaningful glance.
“Hmm,” was all I said in reply as we walked from the taped off area further into the old and broken town. That was interesting. Liz was, as far as I could tell, a thorough and serious detective. I couldn’t imagine she would intentionally botch anything…
But she was also a political animal. She could play games like anybody. Since she was here in Whispering Pines where she hadn’t grown up and where there were not a lot of opportunities to ply her skills, I’d bet this was not her first pick of assignments. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if not playing the political game is what landed her in WP in the first place.
Maybe she saw this as a chance to get into the good graces of even the meagerly powerful people in Whispering Pines, if they could give a word to the State Attorney’s office or the CBI. I’d had very few interactions with her, and in at least two of those I’m sure I heard her use the word “podunk” in reference to my beloved home town. Maybe there was a lot more to this than met the eye.
Or maybe it was good cops doing a good job and my affection for Rip Chiaki (born more out of habit than any real reason) was clouding my mind as to what really happened. He wasn’t a harmless old drunk but a damaged man who’d gone all the way around the bend.
Lost in these thoughts, I almost tripped over the second wall of police tape that was set around the real murder scene.
Looking up, not having paid much attention to the surrounding area as we moved, I was suddenly filled with a creeping foreboding. We were in a ravine, earth crowding up around us like the mouth of something enormous. The shadows were very long here, and light from the sun came in at angles that made them very deep.
“Gosh,” I said, then I saw the gallows, and I swallowed. “Who the hell would want to build something here? This place gives me the creeps,” I said.
“Oh, they have big plans,” Woody said. “Both of ‘em, Sparks and Wendover.” He indicated the gallows when he said the dead man’s name. “They’d open all of this land up around us, fill in a ravine, build a crick, get it so the sun actually shines down here.”
“And then in the next quake, it all falls apart,” I said, stepping over the yellow line.
The gallows might have been a quicky job put together just for show, but it was a solid construction. Thick wood scaffolding, stairs that wrapped around from one side to the other. All leading to the top, with its trap-door and hanging beam. I half expected a noose to be wafting in the slight breeze there beneath the beam, but there was nothing.
“Hey, no chalk outline of the body,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and failing miserably.
“That was never for police work. That was for the press. Wikipedia tells me so,” he said, solemnly.
“Well…” And then I didn’t have anything to say. I could see the ground around the gallows, stomped up by a million boots. There was a ladder leaning up against the hanging beam, presumably left there by a construction crew and then used by the police to get Mr. Wendover down.
Looking at all of this, taking it in totality, I came up with one undeniable fact: I had no idea what I was doing. The police had labs and took pictures. Experienced folks could probably look at the swirl of messed up dirt and determine just who took each step. Just looked like a bunch of prints to me. A whole mess.
“Hey, Kate, I leave you here, you ain’t gonna make any trouble?” Woody said. I nodded back at him, absent-mindedly. “Because I gotta keep an eye to make sure nobody gets in here… heh, ‘cept you, I guess.”
“Yeah, I’ll be careful,” I said. I watched Woody walk for a while, then I took my own trip. Right up the gallows.
It was a tough trip. Emotionally, it felt like I was stepping down into some deep dark basement, even as I climbed higher toward the meager light. This was an instrument of death. Wendover had it put in as part of his plans for “entertainment” - well, I couldn’t imagine anything making me queasier than to see somebody playing Hanging Cowboys with this thing.
And it was a tough trip physically. Each stair-step was huge, and I practically had to get on my hands and knees to get up each one. Then when I got to the top, the hanging beam still loomed high over me. It was thick as a tree, with a hefty wooden base that the pole and beam came out of.
I imagined that I were Rip Chiaki, drunk or sober, furiously climbing these steps, dragging James Wendover after me. Was he kicking and screaming? No, that would be impossible. He had to knock him out ahead of time and then…
Haul him up the ladder? By the necktie?
It would take enormous strength to do this thing. And Rip, God bless ‘im, was a shaky drunk who looked this morning like he’d had quite a workout just holding up the pen he wrote his incoherent confession with.
No, this was not Rip’s doing. No way, no how. A team of three Rips could barely pull it off, unless the whole drunk thing was an act. It wasn’t. This just was not him.
It was just as I came to this firm conviction that I saw something. Down, further in the street. At first it seemed like a glint of light, like the reflection from a pool.
Then I saw a person there, standing on the other side of the swinging doors of the saloon. Which must have been the very saloon that Rip had been found in, drunk and singing. Its sign was mostly peeled away, but a remnant of the words “Real Jimmy” was still there. The light was a reflection off of a tie-pin this person wore. Red, white, blue, shiny. Wendover’s tie pin!
“Hey,” I called out, but whoever it was turned around and immediately disappeared into the saloon.
I nearly leaped off the gallows to chase him. A moment’s sane reflection stopped me (it was 10 feet down - maybe not a lot for an athlete, but certainly not the thing to do all dressed for business like I was.)
I bounded down the steps, still nearly falling on my face, and then picked myself up and careened toward the saloon. As it loomed closer, faster, I realized I had actually been inside it before. It was when I was a kid, in high school.
It was one of the main places we would dare each other to go. It wasn’t so deep in the ravine then, since this was before the big quake that cut it off, but there also wasn’t a bridge. You had to jump a few good feet to get there. It couldn’t have been much (I’d never heard of anyone falling in) but it looked scary, and that’s enough.
Supposedly there was an ancient case of mid-19th century tequila down in the basement of the saloon. The dare was to go inside, take a long swig, then come out. Not much of a dare (and, if I remember right, like most places built in the California mountains the saloon didn’t actually have a basement - so there was nowhere to look for this phantom tequila) but we all tried it, and lied about what we found.
Pushing through the saloon doors, the wave of nostalgia I’d been feeling died with a wave of revulsion. It smelled in here. A creepy, dwelt in smell, like animals had made it their den. There was something else, too. A chill smell like freezer-burnt meat.
Then I saw the man, up the stairs, looking down from the balcony. In the light I could barely see his face, just the gleam of that pin.
And I’ll be damned if what little I saw of his face didn’t look just like James Wendover.
What was this, all some kind of scheme? Were the police of Whispering Pines playing “Let’s Scare Kate Becker to Death”? Did Wendover have a twin brother who was trying to take his place, so he murdered James and waited for the right time to spring out, and tell us all we made a terrible m
istake?
None of it made sense, but he was up there, and I was going to get him.
“You hold it, mister,” I said, as he turned and stepped into one of the rooms just off the hall.
I leapt up the stairs, my feet pounding against the wood, sending a cacophony throughout the building that I’m sure echoed throughout the entire ravine.
Curious, I thought, I couldn’t hear his footsteps at all when he walked up.
Then I heard a very loud crack, and there was suddenly nothing underneath my feet, and I fell.
Chapter 6
I woke up, so I wasn’t dead. Unless purgatory looks like Whispering Pines General, which I hope it does not, with the white and green tile they have all over the place. It makes the entire hospital look like some giant medicine cabinet.
Then I gasped with shock that I was alive and wasn’t in Crestgold.
The first thing I saw, after the hospital room, was the face I least wanted to see on this planet. With her pinched, sideways mouth that looked like it was perpetually feeling for a cigarette that wasn’t there, Liz Schwille eyed me like a mother hen looking at a snake, with one of her eggs in its mouth.
“Hi,” I said.
She moved her head slightly to one side, then the other, and the animal impression I got from her grew stronger and creepier. I felt like I needed an adult.
Thankfully, my feeble little “Hi” brought my own personal cavalry in the form of big ol’ Blake. He rushed through the curtain, with his face a total mask of concern (he’s not so expressive, which means he had a slight turn down of his mouth and a subtle crease in the corners of his eyes - that’s a lot of emotion to show for Blake.) He grabbed my hand and looked at me, pursing his lips slightly.
“Hey, honey,” he said, and squeezed my hand.
Liz cleared her throat, which made a mean old pit bully sound.
“Chief Deputy Blake, I’m about to question this person on why she was trespassing—”
“A defense attorney has a right, and even a mandate to conduct investigations for exculpatory evidence when their defendant is being railroaded. Going to the scene of the crime and checking up on the police’s potentially slipshod work is simply part of my job,” I said, hoping throwing the word ‘potentially’ in there would keep Liz from throttling me in front of my man.
“You were disrupting a crime scene. That’s obstruction of justice.”
“I am justice, and boy have I got a headache. What happened to me?” I said, looking at Blake for some reassurance. His brow crinkled a little more. Boy, he was feeling sorry for me. “I saw someone in the saloon… and they had Wendover’s tie pin! They were wearing it, and… was the place searched? Did you find the guy?”
Liz smirked at me. On her face, it was a particularly nasty look.
“Of course not. There was nobody there, and no phantom wearing Wendover’s tie pin. If you would do your due diligence as an officer of the court, you would know that that pin, or bar, as people who know about jewelry would recognize it as, was a Tiffany gold clasp customized by Mr. Wendover with a dozen small rubies and sapphires, making it worth several thousand dollars and ample motive for the crime, even if there weren’t the personal animosity between Wendover and the drunk.”
“Rip Chiaki,” I said, not that it was going to change Liz’s attitude.
“The point, Miss Public Defender, is that even if it weren’t for yesterday’s unprovoked assault on the victim by your client, just being there, in the state he was in, saying the things he was saying, we would have hauled him in. That he had the victim’s property on his person, and his blood on his hands, literally, could be more than we need to convict.”
“You’re the second person to lie about the blood on his hands,” I said, sitting up, pointing, then falling back down. Boy, my head did hurt.
“No, nobody’s lying,” the detective said with as condescending an attitude as a human could muster. “Type A positive blood found on Chiaki’s knuckles, and a cut on the back of Mr. Wendover’s head, presumably where he’d been hit and incapacitated before being dragged up the gallows and gruesomely hanged.”
I gulped. My picture of the struggling, kicking and screaming Wendover changed into a limp, dragged body, thumping against each step. Still, Rip was frail. The way he rubbed his wrists in the interrogation room, after the small effort of just writing on a pad. He was obviously too weak to do any of what he was accused of… but I kept my mouth shut.
Let Liz think I was cowed.
“So, who was it you saw in the saloon before you practically brought the entire building down around your head?” Liz said. “Hold on, I need to write this down. It’s clearly important evidence.”
She brought out her notebook, opened it to a fresh new page and stood poised to write.
Blake stepped in. “Detective Schwille, Miss Becker’s been through enough today, don’t you think?”
“But I thought she’d cracked the case wide open. Come on, Public Defender. Was it…” She leaned in and made her voice all solemn. “Was it a ghost that you saw in the ghost town? I’d like it on record that the public defender sees ghosts.”
“I’ll be seeing yours in a minute,” I muttered, feeling very silly the second the words came out.
“Was that a threat?” Liz said. “I’m asking seriously, because if it was it wasn’t a very coherent one. Does that mean you’ll turn me into a ghost? Care to elaborate?”
“Liz,” Blake said.
She gave him a withering look, shook her head, and stepped back through the curtain.
“Ow,” I said, for the pain on my head and in my head and all over my stupid everything. I didn’t like being made a fool, I didn’t like that what I saw could not have been seen. I didn’t like anything right now.
“How’d I get out, anyway?” I said, rubbing my forehead. I ached all over, but it wasn’t an especially terrible ache. The sort of thing you feel after a fall down, that’s all.
“Woody heard the collapse and came running. If he hadn’t been there…”
“If he hadn’t been there I would not have gone into the saloon on my own. Don’t worry about me,” I said, trying to look very competent and not at all needing of rescue. “I can take care of myself.” And see ghosts by myself, apparently. And miss parts of police reports because I was too busy deciding ahead of time how my client couldn’t be guilty.
“Kate, you could have been killed.”
“By what? There was nobody there,” I said, not quite spitting the words but still sounding very bitter and growly.
“By the stairs falling in under your feet and the ravines all up and down that place. What makes you think you could even safely be there?” he said, his voice gaining a little bit of heat.
I reflected the heat, and fanned it, because I was getting mad. “Well, who else is going to do this job? Everybody wants Rip to take the fall for something I know he didn’t do. Heck, I bet he couldn’t have done it. There’s an explanation for everything here, and none of it is ‘local townsman suddenly becomes homicidal.’ No, I don’t think there’s been a real investigation at all. What was Wendover even doing there at whenever in the morning? That’s the real question here, not if poor little Kate needs an escort everywhere she goes.”
I had gesticulated and thrown myself about on the bed enough that my covers had nearly fallen off, and I was dressed in nothing but a skimpy hospital gown. That just made me madder as I made to cover myself.
“And why am I here? I’m not bleeding. I passed out, sure, but there’s nothing wrong with me now.”
“The doctors want to keep you overnight for observation. You hit your head, and you might have—”
“I’ve got a headache, Blake, not a concussion. Are you with them, too? Do you want me to sit back and not do anything because it makes for better politics? Huh?” I was on my feet now, tearing off the monitors that kept beeping around me, and was hunting for my skirt.
“Kate, get—”
“If you tell me t
o get back in bed, so help me, Blake Spanner, I’m filing for divorce.”
That made him blink. “We’re not married.”
“I’m patient, I’ll wait.”
I can’t quite read Blake’s mind. Some women seem to have that knack, but I don’t, so when he completed half-an-eye-roll and stopped himself, I didn’t know if he was thinking I was crazy, the situation was crazy, whatever. But I found my power skirt stowed underneath the hospital bed, and had it pulled over my gown when the doctor came in.
I didn’t know her, and I didn’t like her at sight. She got out, “Where do you think you’re—” before I hit her with a barrage of lawyerspeak so thick, I don’t even know what I said. It was like I was in a fugue state, punch drunk and lashing out with all the training I had at my disposal.
In a whirlwind like the Tasmanian devil, I was pushed out of that hospital in the customary wheelchair five minutes from when I started talking. Blake was doing the pushing, his eyes practically crossed from trying to follow whatever the heck I was saying.
“How’d my car get here?” I said, standing out of the chair and grabbing at my door.
“I drove it from Crestgold,” Blake said, simply.
Just as simply, I kissed him. He was sweet and thoughtful and I was being a heck of a pain. I needed to be to do my job right, and I won’t apologize for that. But still, he didn’t deserve to bear the entire brunt of my onslaught.
“I’m going to my office, then… what time is it?”
“Almost four.”
Holy cats, I’d been out of commission for hours. Who knew what new nefarious rumors were being planted around town about my client while I was conked out by falling staircases?
“Okay, dang. Well… Blake, I’m going to be working on this 24/7. I know you’ve got to be with your cop buddies and blind to all the obvious flaws in your reports and everything, so I’m not gonna ask you to help me. But don’t do anything against me, Blake. I mean it, I’m gonna be a bulldog on this, and bite anyone who gets in my way.”