by Linda Barnes
“I’m afraid that doesn’t sound like them.”
“Does it sound like any of your other students?”
“Really, Mr. Spraggue, I have so many.” Dr. Eustace closed the notebook, thrust it back into the drawer. “If your partner recalls the name—”
“How many Davis students are working this year’s crush?”
“I don’t know exactly … maybe twenty. Now …”
Spraggue tried one of the menacing stares his movie counterpart, Harry Bascomb, was fond of. “Do you have a list of those students?”
“I, uh, I can check, if you’d like.” Eustace almost disappeared under his desk, came up with the black notebook again. He ran his finger nervously down a column of names, never taking his eyes entirely off Spraggue.
“I’m looking for someone dark-haired, slight, a pale complexion—”
“Mark Jason.”
“Jason,” Spraggue said easily. “That could be it. Where’s he working now?”
“As I said, Mr. Spraggue, I really have very definite feelings about interrupting—”
Spraggue tried the stare again.
“Um.” Eustace ducked his head. “Mark Jason is an observer this year, alternating between four or five places, checking out different techniques—”
“Which four or five places?”
Eustace quickly rattled off the names. Spraggue wrote them down with a sinking heart. No winery that had any connection with Lenny Brent, no winery owned or operated by any of Lenny’s close friends or enemies. So much for the identity of the dead man illuminating the face of his killer.…
“Would the description I gave you fit more than one of the students on your list?”
“Ummmm … let me see. There’s—No … You said five foot ten? Five foot ten. Dark hair … I’m afraid not.”
“Does Mark Jason live on campus?”
“I believe so.”
“Would you be able to give me his address and phone number, in case I have trouble reaching him in Napa?”
“Certainly!” Eustace’s voice cracked with relief. Anything to get this madman out of his office. He led the way to the registrar’s lair, gave hurried instructions, and departed with a puzzled frown.
Armed with phone number and address, Spraggue walked a few aimless blocks, settled on a phone booth. No sense in locating 25 Delmar Heights if Mark Jason was answering his phone.
He dialed 555-1210 and waited. Six rings, eight, ten, twelve. Someone picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” A high female voice, breathless with just-climbed stairs.
“Hi,” Spraggue said.
“Mark! Damn you, I was starting to get worried!” The joy, the relief in her voice made Spraggue want to hang up, shove the whole business back on Bradley. “When did you get back? Where are you? Is everything okay? Mark?”
“Please don’t hang up,” Spraggue said. “I’m not Mark, but I am trying to find him. My name is Michael Spraggue.”
“Who are you trying to find?” The words came back after a pause, loaded with suspicion.
“Mark Jason. I’ve been over at the enology department. Dr. Eustace gave me this number.”
“Well, Mark’s not home.”
“This is important,” Spraggue said forcefully. “Very important.” He caught himself, softened his voice. “Have you seen or heard from Mark in the past two weeks?”
More hesitation, a slight gulp. “No.”
“Then I have to see you.”
“See me? Look, I don’t know what you want, but—”
“I’ll knock on your door. I’ll show you any kind of ID you want. You can have a friend with you. Any conditions, but let me talk to you.”
“Talk.”
“In person.”
A long silence this time. “Okay,” came the voice finally, shakily. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“I have a class at one, so—”
“I can be there in five minutes.” Spraggue almost started to hang up. “Wait. What’s your name?”
“Carol Lawton. Ring Mark’s apartment.”
“Fine.” He replaced the receiver, drew a deep breath.
His map said he didn’t need the car. His shoes hit the pavement hard. Damn. Damn Kate for getting him back into the P.I. game. Damn his own curiosity. He heard Carol Lawton’s eager voice and felt his stomach knot. “Stay in the movies,” he murmured to himself.
He didn’t have to ring Jason’s bell. Carol Lawton, ill at ease, waited in the hallway of the narrow four-story building. She had a thin, heart-shaped face and a tall, gawky body, lovely eyes and a tremulous smile.
“Mr. Spraggue?”
“Miss Lawton?”
She smiled at that, nervously, unused to the formality. “Carol will do.”
“So will Michael.” They shook hands. She had a tiny dimple in her right cheek.
The hallway was gloomy, uninviting. “Can we talk here?” she said with a hopeless look around.
“I’d like to see Mark Jason’s room.”
“Not until I know what this is all about.” The dimple vanished.
“We could walk around the block while I try to explain.”
“Let me see some identification.”
Good for you, Spraggue said to himself. Solemnly he displayed both his driver’s license and his old P.I. card.
“Mark’s in trouble,” she said flatly. “I want to know about it.”
He held the door open and she walked to the right, as if there were only one correct way to circle the block.
“Don’t pretty it up,” she said, before he’d decided how to start. “Just say it.”
He took her at her word. “A man was killed near St. Helena. The police haven’t been able to identify him. I’m operating on the assumption that he had something to do with wine, that his disappearance from the valley wouldn’t be noticed, that his absence here wouldn’t be reported.”
Carol stopped mid-stride. “What did he look like?”
“Early twenties, thin build, dark, unathletic, five-ten.”
“My God.” She stumbled on a patch of uneven sidewalk. Spraggue touched her elbow and she straightened up immediately. “Mark’s been gone two weeks.”
“Where did he go?”
She stared at the sidewalk. “He didn’t say. He was mysterious about it, mischievous, like he was going to play a big joke on somebody. I should have—” She tried a laugh, but it came out all wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Spraggue said. “I don’t even know for sure that it’s Mark. If you’d let me see his room—”
She fumbled in her purse, pulled out a battered red wallet. “I’ve got a picture—”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t help much.”
“My God,” she whispered again. “What was it? A car crash? He wasn’t a very good driver.”
“I’m sorry.”
They marched the rest of the way in silence, but she made no protest when he followed her into the tiny elevator.
Utilitarian. That was the word for Mark Jason’s fourth-floor flat. The furnishings were student-sparse, but plenty of books lined the block-and-board shelves. A picture of Carol Lawton smiled up from a silver frame.
“I’d like to take something with his fingerprints on it.” Spraggue said. “Nothing of value. A pen he used. A glass from the bathroom.”
“Will that tell you for sure?”
“It’ll tell the fingerprint experts in Napa.”
She led the way through a narrow hall to a tiny bathroom. “The blue glass,” she said. “He’ll be mad if he comes back and—”
“I won’t lose it,” Spraggue said. He wrapped it carefully in a paper towel.
The phone rang. Carol ran back to the living room, snatched the receiver up, color flooding her cheeks. “Hello,” she said urgently, willing Mark Jason onto the other end. Her face fell. She held the receiver out limply. “It’s for you.”
“Me?” He stared dumbly.
“The Napa County Sheriff’
s Office.”
He grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Well, there you are. Who’s the lady with the pretty voice?” It was Bradley.
“How did you—”
“No sweat, once I got on to Eustace. God, that man can talk.”
“What’s up?”
“Get back here.”
“Look, I’ve got a real lead. I think I know—”
“Just get back as fast as you can, Spraggue. Kate Holloway should be discharged any time now.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, but—”
“We just pulled another body out of a car trunk.”
“Not—” Spraggue had a momentary vision of Howard.
“Unidentified. One of the cops says he spotted the guy hitchhiking around the place. Just found him. Changes things.”
“Right.” Spraggue checked his watch. “I’ll be there in an hour. I’ll leave now.”
“Check my office for a message if I’m not in.”
“Thanks.”
Spraggue hung up the phone and stared blankly at the girl on the couch.
17
He didn’t break any speed records on the return trip to Napa. His departure was delayed; he owed Carol Lawton some kind of explanation.
She listened woodenly, her thin features utterly composed, so much so that Spraggue wasn’t sure if anything he said actually registered. She nodded occasionally, but that might have been politeness, not comprehension. She broke in on his soliloquy near the end.
“But this, this new death …” She spoke hesitantly, so softly he had to lean forward in his chair and practically lip-read. “The one you just heard about. Doesn’t that throw everything off? Couldn’t that mean Mark’s okay?”
“No,” he’d said bluntly, cruelly, not wanting her to hope.
But she hadn’t really believed him.
He’d taken the carefully wrapped glass and promised to phone that evening, giving her the Holloway Hills number just in case.
To shut out the memory of that pinched, hurt face, Spraggue turned on the tiny tape recorder he faithfully kept in his pocket, recited lines and cues from Still Waters all the way back to the sheriff’s office. He didn’t memorize a single line, but it kept his mind off Bradley’s new discovery.
He parked at a fire hydrant, ripe for a ticket. Kate was gone, released half an hour ago, and chauffeured home. No Bradley. No Enright. No message. Spraggue entrusted the precious glass to a sergeant, with instructions to give it to no one but Bradley. In exchange, he got the whereabouts of the latest victim: Deer Park Road.
He drove north. Just past the second turn-off for Sanitarium Road, the familiar police cars, vans, and wreckers were drawn into a huddle. It was like the discovery of Lenny’s body all over again, in a daylight dream.
The police had cordoned off the area with wooden stakes and heavy rope. Sunlight glinted off tripod-mounted cameras and the chrome bumper of a red-and-white ambulance. Ten or more people, each intent on a specific task, crowded the small plot of ground—motioning, shouting, staring, scribbling in spiral notebooks. The effect, Spraggue thought briefly, was much like that of an on-location film site. The sheet-covered corpse that two men lifted onto a stretcher was real.
“Just keep on moving, buddy.” The gravel-voiced cop leaned in his front window as he pulled the station wagon over onto the soft grass.
“Lieutenant Bradley’s guest,” Spraggue said.
The man shrugged, blew a bubble out of what Spraggue had assumed to be a huge wad of chewing tobacco. “Name?”
“Michael Spraggue.”
“Keep out of the way.”
“Sure.”
Spraggue left the car unlocked for a quick escape in case Enright caught sight of him before Bradley.
The dark-green Buick Regal was the focus of all attention. Four doors flung wide, trunk and hood uplifted, it attracted not only the scrutiny of men with magnifying lenses, but a constant barrage of flashbulbs. The left front tire rested in a low rut, but there were no tire cuts in the turf, no sign that the driver had rocked the car in an effort to get out of the hole. The tracks were clear; the car had been abandoned. Unless it was out of gas.
The rear license plate was muddy, but legible. Spraggue wrote down the numbers on the back of an old business card. Either heisted from some suburban shopping mall or rented by a John Smith or Jane Doe. Still, the car was a break in the pattern. As far as he knew, it had absolutely no connection to Kate or Holloway Hills.
A van, beige with rainbow-colored letters announcing KABC, pulled over with a screech and blocked his escape route. Spraggue glanced around for Bradley, saw Enright.
At six feet four and three hundred pounds, Enright was normally hard to miss. Now, face flushed to a beet red, voice raised as he hollered instructions to his crew, he was unavoidable. Spraggue ducked behind a tree and listened. Was Enright so furious because he’d had to let Kate go? Or had he been on the receiving end of a few choice comments by the elusive Sheriff Hughes?
If Bradley was anywhere around, he’d have to be over in a little tree-shaded gully. Spraggue took a few steps in that direction, stopped dead when the sudden hush warned him of Enright’s approach.
The huge man’s complexion was an even duskier hue than before. He bore down on Spraggue with giant steps. “What do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded. “This is official—”
Spraggue turned to confront Enright and was shocked to find a toothy grin spreading over the captain’s face. Spraggue looked over his shoulder and blessed KABC. They had their video-cam pointed straight at Enright. The little red light on the top was flashing.
Spraggue slipped into the reporter role instinctively, knowing that Enright, this new Enright with the fatuous grin, would tell him just about anything as long as that red light gleamed.
“When was the body found?” he asked authoritatively. A woman joined him, nodded, and shoved a microphone up against Enright’s chin.
“Uh … we discovered the body of an unidentified young white male two, maybe three hours ago.”
“How did that come about?” Spraggue asked.
“Huh?”
The woman took over, and Spraggue breathed a sigh of relief. “Did you discover the body through a routine check, or did you receive information that a body would be found?” She had dark hair and wide-set green eyes. Spraggue thought he might have seen her once on the news.
“I can’t answer that at this time,” Enright said, looking self-important.
The reporter wasn’t thrown a beat. “Are the police considering this the third murder by the Car-Trunk Killer?”
“It has certain similarities to other homicides we are currently investigating—”
“And you feel that one man is responsible for all three killings?”
“I do,” Enright said, nodding his head stiffly for emphasis. He stared right into the camera, mesmerized.
“Is there anything significant about this particular death?” asked the woman. “Something you might consider a clue to the murderer’s identity?”
“Well, uh.” For a moment Enright looked as if he would balk at an answer. He glared fiercely at Spraggue, willing him to go away. Spraggue smiled at the camera.
“Uh … we do feel that we have a motive, a clear motive in this case. With that in mind, we will now review our findings in the other two deaths. No further questions, please.”
The red light went off. The woman and her crew backed off for a long-shot wrap-up. Spraggue tried to tag along.
“You,” Enright whispered furiously. “You. Get back here!” His grin was gone.
“What do you mean, you’ve got a motive?” Spraggue decided to attack.
“What do you mean, barging through a police cordon—”
“Look, Enright, you’re wrong on this one. This murder breaks all the patterns. Why are you calling it the third in the series?”
“Wait a minute.” Enright held up a huge pawlike
hand. “You’re saying we’ve got two, maybe three separate killers who get off stuffing bodies in car trunks?”
“This one is different! You’ve got a car that’s not anywhere near Holloway Hills. It doesn’t belong to anyone connected with Holloway Hills.”
“So you say—”
“So I say. How was this guy killed?”
“Looks like manual strangulation.”
“Well, that’s out of whack, too. The other killer goes in for more exotic means.”
“Maybe he ran out of ideas.”
Spraggue wished he didn’t have to stare so far up at Enright. “The victim was a hitcher, right? No connection with the wine industry?”
“Not as far as we—where did you get that about him being a hitchhiker?”
“Look, I think I know who the first victim was.” Spraggue hoped Bradley would forgive him. “I left a glass at your office to be fingerprinted.”
“Folks at my office don’t take orders from you.” Enright’s voice was pitched dangerously low. “I think you’d better get a move on.”
“I’m just trying to point out that there are such things as copycat killings.”
“Look, Spraggue, I want you out of here. For good. While your partner was in jail, I had some sympathy for you. But now that she’s free, you’ve got no interest, legitimate or otherwise, in police affairs.”
“The first victim’s name is Mark Jason. He was a student in enology at U.C.-Davis.”
“Write it all up for me, why don’t you?” Enright said scornfully. “And leave it at my office. No need for you to follow me around.”
“Listen—”
“You want me to have some of these fine officers escort you to your car?”
Spraggue muttered an obscenity under his breath, took one more desperate glimpse around, saw no one remotely like Bradley. He had to honk at the TV van for five minutes before the driver deigned to move it the necessary two feet. He broke the speed limit driving back to Holloway Hills.
18
As he mounted the creaky front steps, Spraggue called Kate’s name. He knocked three times before using his key, eased the door open with a curious mixture of anticipation and dread.
“Kate?” He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed by the answering empty echo. He scanned the living room: nothing. Not even his duffel bag dumped in the middle of the rug, an unspoken order to leave.