by Dakota Kahn
I didn’t tell him everything. I mentioned my visit to the gallows (which he, of course, already knew about) and my semi-impromptu conversation with Mrs. Wendover. I told him about finding that Feather woman in my office… but I didn’t think he needed to know just yet about the accomplice to b&e that I did with Miguela. That I would break to him gently in seven years when the statute of limitations had run out.
Instead, I put it like this: “I ran into Miguela Sepulveda, and she says a private investigator has been going around town, getting dossiers on all sorts of decent folk.” I looked around, then whispered, “even me.”
“And how does Miguela Sepulveda know this?” he said.
I shrugged. I didn’t strictly know that, since I only followed her after she’d already found out, so it really wasn’t any kind of lie.
Blake looked at me for a bit, then nodded.
“Obergast, he’s called. I ran him out of Blue Aspen Thursday night. He wouldn’t tell me who his client is but said it would ‘behoove me to be on my best behavior with him.’”
“Well, you don’t want to not behoove.”
“I throw people in jail for bad behooving,” Blake said, nodding.
“So you don’t know who’s holding his leash?” I said. That would be handy to know. Especially with Liz Schwille looking to do me in, legally, having some idea who had potential blackmail material hanging over old Kate Becker’s head would be invaluable info.
“No, but I’m betting it’s one of the recent rich arrivals.”
“Sparks? Wendover?” I said.
Blake nodded.
“Ugh,” I said, leaning back in my chair, watching the Greenes just as our waitress brought our food over. They’d been eating in relative silence. Mrs. Greene would occasionally chuckle and coo at their little girl, while Mr. Greene sawed at a plate of biscuits and gravy like he was cutting through cardboard, and chewing mechanically.
Near as I could tell, he never said a word. Just opened his mouth, piled in food, and chewed with a grimace. And not once did he take his eyes away from his plate or table. It was long past time he noticed me looking at him. I was ready for him to burst out of his seat like an angry bull and charge toward us.
But he just ate and slurped coffee and looked like a man with a mind very far off on other things.
“You still haven’t told me,” Blake said.
“What?” I said, not looking at him, keeping my eyes on the cud-chewing Greene.
“You haven’t told me what exactly makes you so sure that Rip couldn’t have done it.”
I gave Blake a frank, disturbed look.
“You told me he was being railroaded.”
“And I think that he is. That’s not the same as not guilty. But I know you, Miss Kate Becker. You have some very specific idea why he’s not guilty. Spill.”
I do not know why I hesitated to tell him. This was Blake. Not just any Blake, my Blake. He’d done nothing but be trustworthy to me, even when I didn’t know it. The smart thing would have been just to hand over my briefcase and let him look through my notes, my suppositions, my ideas of what could (and could not) have happened.
But something made me pause. However irrational or maybe even silly, given that this wasn’t my case anymore, it was still my case. Even if just in my mind. I don’t think it was just an ego thing - I really believed I was the only one who could do everything right to bring Rip home.
Except I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. I think one thing that could sink this whole case, and get Liz Schwille back out and doing her job, looking for the real killer,” I said, inadvertently staring directly at Lawrence Greene when I said it. “Weakness.”
“Sure, there’s a weakness in the case,” Blake said. “Where?”
“Physical weakness. Rip’s kind of destroyed, honey. He’s held together by pine tar and scotch. He could barely lift the pen to write out that fake confession. There’s no way he could physically lift up any man and hang him by his own tie, let alone conk one out, drag him up some very big stairs - remember, I’ve been on that gallows - and then hoist him several feet above his head to a hanging arm that’s way up there.”
As I said it, I waved my arms over my head, and Lawrence Greene finally noticed me. His eyes narrowed like a snake’s, and he said something sharp at his wife. She shrugged and grabbed her purse.
“Pretty thin gruel,” Blake said, but I was already out of my seat and heading across the way.
“Mr. Greene?” I said, placing my hand on the edge of the booth and standing decidedly in his wife’s way. “And is this Mrs. Greene? Hi, I’m Kate Becker, a local attorney.”
“Oh, hi,” Mrs. Greene said, in a pleasant if deeper voice than I expected, and she took my hand.
Holy cats, she had a grip like python squeezing open a turtle shell. It was just my manners that kept me from swearing and dropping to my knees. And from the placid, if somewhat confused look on her face I don’t think she was doing it intentionally. She was just a strong lady.
“We were just leaving,” Mr. Greene said, scooting toward the end of the booth seat.
“Oh, but Mr. Greene, I’ve been hoping to get a chance to talk to you,” I said.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” he said, growling. Mrs. Greene began to look upset, her eyes darting from me to her husband. Their child, standing up on the other side of the booth and, as far as I could tell catching invisible butterflies, maintained a decorous detachment from our conflict. “She’s defending the guy that killed James.”
Mrs. Greene shot me an alarmed look, which I returned benignly.
“Rip Chiaki did not kill Mr. Wendover,” I said, “But I am no longer his attorney. So it doesn’t directly concern me one way or the other. What does, though, is just what happened out at that ghost town site. Because this is my town, and me and my fellow townspeople all have a right to know.”
“Well, we want to know, too, Mrs. Becker,” Mrs. Greene said, smiling. Something in her face was familiar. I know I’ve never seen this woman in the flesh before, but something in the smile, the expression, it was ringing some bell in the back of my mind.
“Miss Becker, please,” I said, and I stepped out of her way. Just as I expected, Mrs. Greene didn’t make a move to leave, despite her husband’s deepening expression of unquiet. “And that’s great. I mean, you might be part of this community soon, with your casino.”
Mrs. Greene’s smile got a little plastic. I got the feeling she wasn’t the casino’s biggest fan.
“So I was just hoping to clarify some things. Because people are asking me around town, and what people think around town is important. You know, in a little place like this rumors fly around faster than you can imagine, and boy do they explode. A man gets a splinter on one edge of town, by the time we hear about it on the other he’s lost his head in a wood chipper and we’re baking casseroles for the widow.”
I tried to smile and pass that off as down-home and adorable. I do not think it worked, because Mrs. Greene’s eyes went wide and she was looking for possible escape routes.
“So, Mr. Greene, you went with Mr. Wendover to the work site that night.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Lawrence said, gruffly.
“Why aren’t you talking to her, daddy?” the little girl said, suddenly jumping in her dad’s lap.
He groaned, and leaned back away from her. It was such an odd reaction to a big man having his small daughter leap into his arms, I didn’t know what to think.
Then, through a wince, he said, “Don’t worry, sweetie, the lady’s just nosy.”
“My dad says you’re nosy. I got two noses, see?” She poked her thumbs in her nostrils, and stuck out her tongue. “I’ve also got a monkey,” she said, her nasal voice drawling out.
“Maybell, please!” Mrs. Greene said.
“The other night, on the site,” I said, not letting familial chaos derail my serious investigation.
“Yes,” Mr. Green
e growled.
“And James Wendover went to the site while you waited in the office?” I said.
“You already know this, so why are you asking?” he said.
“So what time did you get home?” I said.
“He didn’t,” Mrs. Greene said simply.
“What?” I said, looking between them.
“I was there until my workers arrived, and we found James,” Mr. Greene said.
“You found the…” I was about to say body when I noted a little girl was hanging on my every word. “What there was to find. But you didn’t see or hear anything while it happened? Nobody could drive up to the spot while you were in the office, and you not see it.”
“Of course not, and nobody did. The drunk was already there,” Greene said. He set the girl down very gingerly, then stood up himself. “And that’s all I have to say.”
“I’m sorry we can’t be more help,” Mrs. Greene said, quickly and I thought very sincerely. “Believe me, nobody wants to catch James’ killer more than us.”
Then a smile, and they were gone, the girl bouncing between them, jabbering about her monkey.
“Get anything new?” Blake asked when I sat back down.
“No,” I said, poking at some bacon remnants on my plate. “But boy that Mrs. Greene looks familiar. I swear I’d seen her before.”
“Pretty lady. She talked to me at the rally. What did they say to you?”
I briefly related my conversation, and Blake nodded along. “Too bad there were no security cameras set up on the site”
I nodded, a bit idly. Then realized what Blake was saying and died a little inside. That was going to be my next big idea, and it was already gone. That, and the fact that my connection to this case was so completely tangential now, was bumming me out more than I thought it would.
If I wanted I could just go home and soak in the tub, nobody would notice or mind. I didn’t even need to be carrying my briefcase around. I have no briefs to worry about.
We were heading out of the restaurant when Blake decided to take a trip to the little boy’s room. I went outside to see if I could catch the Greenes leaving. I don’t know why I had that impulse but it was there. I wanted to be familiar with their car, with them. Something was off about both of them in that conversation. Almost like it had been rehearsed? Or was that my head going nuts?
I wandered around the side of the restaurant to the back parking lot, where there were only a couple of cars waiting, and I was suddenly very alone. There wasn’t much traffic to make a steady stream of noise here in Whispering Pines. Whiskey Mountain backed right up to the forest, which itself went for a quarter mile before it became mountains. There was a small path back there, leading off the property, that became a bridge over a very small brook that ran behind the restaurant.
This was what I had come home to. The quiet and the solitude and the sense of wholeness you can’t get, so separated from nature as your are in the city. At least for me. That was what was so disturbing about this murder, taking place so close to home. It threatened to take all that one-ness away, and who knew what else it would be bringing with it.
I turned, and saw a man coming toward me, quickly, all dressed in black. Including a ski-mask. I barely had time to think to shout before he clobbered me, knocked me down. It was a bizarre, almost silent maneuver so fast I could barely tell it happened. The only noise, besides my gasp which was immediately cut off by his hand was a slight jingle jangle. A metal noise, a bracelet clicking, something, then silence.
Everything went dark for a second, and then I felt my briefcase yanked from my hands, and heard feet running away. Kicking gravel, crunching pine needles. A few short stomps on hardwood, and then the footsteps receded completely away.
Chapter 12
I did not pass out from the attack. I wasn’t hit hard enough to knock me out, and I didn’t faint like women seemed to do in the old movies all the time. I never fainted, I was just dazed and lying still, as if I wanted to go to sleep there on the gravel.
Blake spotted me first, of course, and swore and ran to me. I don’t remember what I told him, but he took a couple steps toward where I thought the guy had run, swore again, and then waited with me for the ambulance to arrive.
Twice in two days I had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and I wasn’t left alone long enough this time to run out.
Even when Blake went back to the scene of the crime, there was somebody keeping an eye on me. Not Deputy Woody - Blake told me that Rip was being transferred from the local jail to a state courthouse (why our court wasn’t good enough, I don’t know - I think the mayor just wanted to get Rip out of town, and I wouldn’t blame him. Not for that, at least) and Woody was the man driving him.
Woody would treat Rip right, at least. Which was the last thing I thought before I had a nice long nap.
When I woke up, Blake was back, and standing right over me. He had that worried look he gets when he’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear and he doesn’t want to say.
“Okay, something bad happened,” I said, looking at him.
“Oh, yeah, you could say that. Or more like a million bad things happened all rolled into one.”
I tried to set myself up for a worst-case scenario. Zombie plague? Alien invasion? A roving jewelry merchant had had a sale on diamond-studded duck collars, and I’d missed it?
No, something closer to home. Rip had broken out of jail and was now going on a crime spree up and down the state, screaming all the while, “Kate Becker led me to a life of crime! She’s my accomplice” and now Blake had to arrest me. That seemed the most wildly implausible thing I could think of. I’d go with that.
“So?” I said. “Hit me, I’m ready for anything.”
“Rip Chiaki escaped custody.”
I was not ready for anything.
“But…”
“And he did it in a… kinda… you know your whole weak as a kitten thing?” Blake said.
I nodded.
“Well… he was being led out of the station house, round the back, by Woody. Well… between there and the car, Rip… he kinda picked Woody up and threw him over a wall.”
“What?” I shrieked.
“Not a very big wall,” Blake said, to ease my mind. “But yeah, that guy’s strong. And quick. He had Woody’s keys before the old guy knew what hit him and now he’s got the police car.”
“Oh,” I said, and then again, much quieter and sadder about the world, “Oh.”
That was that, then. All of my hopes were centered around the notion I was protecting a frail, if self-destructive man from himself. Not some drunken giant, tossing around deputies like stuffed animals and stealing police cars.
All of which have tracking devices. “So you’re traced the car, right? You guys recaught him? Oh, he didn’t…” I had a horrible vision of Rip being shot down while trying to escape. It would be bad for him, of course, but it would also mean an easy end to a murder investigation. A wrong easy end.
“He drove it out to Crestgold, where it was abandoned in the parking lot.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. You can’t escape going out that way,” I said. “There’s no back way out or anything, right? Why would he do that?”
“Because he knows it. Because… I don’t know. I’m not even supposed to be here. We’re forming parties and we’re going to be searching, but it’s getting on to nightfall and that’s not a safe place to go wandering around at night.”
“Then don’t go,” I said, grabbing for him. I was all right, myself, I just needed the rest and some time to recuperate from the shock of getting attacked. But I could use Blake with me. “I’m going to wallow in self-pity and need another wallower. Too little sad piggies,” I said, sighing.
“I gotta go. We’re not going to let anyone go down into the town after it really gets dark, but we need people patrolling the front exit, and I’ve been talking to Gudger and Rex about the possible ways out down through the ravines. Th
ey don’t think there is, but…”
“Oh, God, this is just terrible and stupid.” I fell back against my hospital bed, feeling the bruise on my forehead throb. “But Blake, I still don’t think he did it.”
“You might not,” he said. “But that’s not going to convince anybody else right now. Look, sweetie, I gotta go. I talked to the doctor and they said you can go out anytime you want. Just don’t go anywhere or do anything ever again, so they don’t see you back here.”
I chuckled, and agreed. “Take me to the station,” I said. “My car’s there.”
A more intrepid investigator than myself might have headed right out to the ghost town to figure out what she could. Or maybe she’d be out where she got attacked, armed and ready to get back her briefcase and then beat up whoever dared come against her with her bare hands, and then threaten any on-lookers ‘cause she’s just that tough.
I did not feel tough, though. I felt worn out, used up, short on ideas and just wanting to soak. I barely even felt like driving myself through the dark, tree-lined passages to my home, but there wasn’t much I could do about that without completely pulling Blake out of his way.
I still didn’t buy the way everything had been laid out in front of me. Greene and Wendover go to the job site to tear something down, after midnight. Wendover goes on his own to the gallows, and gets killed while Greene just twiddles his thumbs in the office? And then when workers don’t show up until six in the morning, Greene just waits for them there, and that was that?
That Rip was in the ghost town… sure…
But there was still that thing he said, about the lady giving him a ride…
I took a bath to help my thinking, but it was too relaxing and I fell asleep. I didn’t set up candles and incense or any of that silliness you see in TV shows when ladies have relaxing baths (for Pete’s sake, do these women have endless time to set up and light candles? No, of course they don’t, but on a TV show you have set decorators and prop people whose whole job is to set up candles, so why wouldn’t they do a lot? They don’t pay for the candles themselves, after all. That’s in the budget.)