by Dana Donovan
“For that matter,” said Spinelli, “we have nothing concrete on Johnny Buck either. At least we know our other suspects are alive.”
“Oh, I see.” Carlos pointed a floppy pickle at Spinelli. “As soon as Tony says he has reservations about the Johnny Buck theory, then you shoot me down, too.”
“I’m not shooting you down.”
“You’re not supporting me.”
“I am supporting you! I’m supporting all the working theories.”
“You can’t support them all.”
“I can till we figure out which one is the right one.”
“Then why are you shooting me down?”
“I’m not—”
“No one is shooting you down, Carlos.” I reached across the table and snatched up the check. “I like your Johnny Buck theory; Dominic likes your Johnny Buck theory. I just think we need to keep all scenarios open awhile longer until we fill in a few more holes.”
“Then we need a bigger shovel,” Carlos complained, “because unless something gives here, we are going to end up with more holes, not less.”
“What did you say?”
“I said we need a bigger shovel, because—”
“Yes, yes, I know that. Listen, I think you may have something there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think we have been working this thing all wrong. We started from the end and have been working our way back.”
Spinelli said, “That’s the way you’re supposed to work a murder case. You start with a body, work back through a timeline to check out where he’s been, who he’s talked to and pick up the pieces as you go.”
“Then we have not gone back far enough.” I pulled out my wallet, tossed forty bucks down on the table and said to Carlos, “Do you still carry a shovel in your trunk?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said, molding a look of confusion. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ll tell you later. Let’s take a ride. There is something we should have checked out long ago.”
Spinelli asked, “Am I going with you?”
“No. I want you to stay here in case my theory pans out. I might need you to do something for me.”
“What’s your theory?”
I shook my head. “I’d rather not say now. Come on. Finish up. Time is wasting.”
After dropping Spinelli off at the Justice Center, Carlos and I headed out to the country to where it all began. The cabin Landau owned sat on a three-acre site, eighty feet of it stretching along the banks of Quicksilver Lake. It is my guess that that is where Landau and Johnny Buck planned the armored car robbery, maybe with the help of Sergeant Powell or Chief Running Bear, or both. I had seen pictures of the place; Spinelli made sure of that. Being there, however, gave me a sense of spiritual connection with Landau that pictures could not convey. I could almost feel his presence watching over us, guiding us, as we walked about the cabin ruins.
Outside the charred walls, broken booze bottles and crushed beer cans carpeted the blackened campfire pits left behind by treasure hunters who had come before. Standing in just one place by the cabin steps, Carlos and I counted no less than twenty holes in the ground, some dug as deep as graves, testament to the lure of folklore promising riches beyond one’s wildest dreams.
We walked around the back where a downhill trail led to the lake. There, a rotting dock stretching some twelve feet into the water leaned precariously on its pilings. I looked up at the clouds. Rain threatened, but behaved for the moment. I said to Carlos, “Our answer is here. I can feel it.”
His brow hooked. “What’s the question?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter that Adam Landau let me take from the desk at his house. “Remember this?”
Carlos craned slightly to see it. “Is that one of René’s letters to Adam?”
“Yup. I was looking at this thing earlier and it got me thinking. Do me a favor. Does your phone have GPS?”
“Yes.”
“Punch in these coordinates: 4240.21 North by 7057.06 West. What do you have?”
He pointed to a spot out on the lake. “It’s out there somewhere, almost in the middle.”
“Yeah, that is what I found when I punched in those same coordinates the night before. Only, the funny thing is, that is not what Landau wrote down in this letter.”
“It’s not?”
“No, he wrote down the seconds of the first coordinates as .12 not .21. When I first did it, I got a reading that wasn’t even in the lake.”
“Well, we know he was dyslexic. Maybe he meant to write down .21.”
“I know, which is why I switched the numbers around myself. When I saw that changing the 12 to 21 put the coordinates out in the lake, I decided that must have been what he meant to write.”
“But now you don’t think so?”
“I don’t know. That is what we are here to find out. Go ahead and change the latitude from 4240.21 to 4240.12 and see what we have.”
He did, and when the reading came up, he pointed into the woods down off the main trail. “Like you said, it’s out there.”
I tapped him on the arm and told him to follow me. We stopped off at the car, grabbed the shovel from the trunk and then started into the woods. About three hundred feet in, away from any foot trails or obvious paths, Carlos called out for me to stop. “This is it. You’re standing within a half meter of the exact coordinates.”
I surveyed the area, trying to imagine where I might bury something if I were looking to do so. It had been nearly eighteen years since Landau had been there. Trees, which maybe did not exist back then, could be growing now on the spot where he once stood. I tapped the ground a few times with the shovel and found rock. A few more taps produced soft turf. I started digging. Barely a foot down, my shovel tip struck something solid. I tossed the shovel aside, got down on knees and began moving dirt away with my hands. Before I knew it, I had exposed a human skull, its malposed anteriors locked in a perpetual sneer.
“What is it?” asked Carlos, unable to see, as I hunched over my find. I looked back over my shoulder and smiled up at him.
“Carlos,” I leaned away enough for him to take a gander, “meet Johnny Buck Allis.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll be.” He reached his hand out to help me up. “I guess that was Johnny Buck’s ghost at the séances after all.”
“I guess,” I said, and clapped my hands clean.
“So, Landau was not dyslexic after all?”
“No, he was. He just wasn’t dyslexic about this. I think he wanted to make sure that someone found his Johnny Buck. Maybe he figured he’d be long gone by the time we read his letters.”
“Well, he was right about that, but why did he wanted someone to find him?”
“Friendship,” I said. “It’s a powerful thing.”
“Yeah? I hope I pick my friends better than that.”
“Me too.” I patted him on the shoulder with my dirty hand. “Look, do you still have the phone number we found on Landau?”
“The one on the napkin from Pete’s Place?”
“Yes.”
“Sure.”
“Let me see it.”
“Tony, we tried that number already. It rings the movie house.”
“I know; that’s why I’m not going to call it. I’m going to invert the last two digits.”
“Oh, I get it.” He opened his notepad and read the number aloud. I took out my phone and made the call. On the second ring, a young woman answered. I hung up immediately.
“I was right,” I said.
“`Bout what?”
“Do you remember the initials Landau wrote down alongside the number on that napkin?”
He checked his notepad again. “Yeah, he wrote PTA. What’s that, Parents Teachers Association?”
I laughed. “Hardly. Think about it, and remember Landau was dyslexic.”
He thought about it a second, and his face lit up when
it came to him. “PTA is really PAT. Patricia! It was Trish Rosado that met him at Pete’s Place, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sure of it. She fits Pete’s description: young, blond, ass like a snare drum.” I dialed the phone again.
“Now who are you calling?”
I shushed him. “Hello, Dominic? Listen, I need you to go down to the Perc and pick up Trish Rosado. She should be there working now. As soon as you get her in custody, I want you to text Adam using her phone. Text the message, found money at cabin. Come quickly. You got it? Good.”
I hung up, and again Carlos was smiling like the cat that got the canary. “You think Adam killed his own father?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see what happens when he gets here.”
The thickening skies that had behaved themselves so well were beginning to sprinkle on us by the time Adam Landau showed up. I purposely kept my back to him as he approached, pretending I did not hear him coming. It could have been a huge mistake and maybe cost me dearly, but I wanted him to think he had the upper hand. I was leaning on my shovel, looking down into one of the larger holes around the cabin, when I heard it: the distinctive mechanized clicking sound a revolver makes when one draws back the hammer. I dropped the shovel, turned slowly and took a single step forward.
“That’s far enough,” he said. Adam had assumed a shooter’s stance, his gun, a .38 police special, leveled at my chest, steadied by both hands. “Where is Trish?”
“We have her in custody.”
“What are you charging her with?”
I raised my shoulders and dropped them lightly. “Not sure yet, accessory maybe.”
“She had nothing to do with my dad’s death.”
“Sure she did. She lured him out into the alley so that you could shoot him.”
“No. She went there to talk sense into him. He was going to share that money with me. That was always the plan when he was in prison.”
“So, what happened?”
“What happened was he got out. He said that some people were after him, bad people; said if we took off with the money that they would come after us and kill us both for it.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“Believe him?” Adam dropped his left hand and marched toward me, waving the gun wildly in his right. “What I believed, Detective, was that he cared for me. I believed every moment I suffered on the outside waiting for him to get out of prison would pay off when he got out. That is what he promised me. That is what I believed. Instead, what did he do? He got out, came straight to my house and told me to my face that I should forget about him and the money. That wasn’t the deal!”
“So, you killed him.”
The rain was coming down harder now, soaking us both to the bone. Still, I could see the tears spilling off his cheeks and disappearing in the cascade of falling raindrops.
“No.” His voice had calmed some. “It was not supposed to happen that way. Trish and I went to the bar with a plan. See, my dad never met Trish before. We knew he had been hitting the bottle, and that he had not been with a woman in nearly eighteen years. I told Trish to go in there and try to pick him up. I figured if he were drunk enough, maybe he would take her to a motel and then she could get him to tell her where he hid the money.”
“You would do that?” I asked. “You would let your fiancé sleep with your own father for a buck?”
“A buck?” He laughed. “No, Detective, not for a buck, but for six million? Hell ya!”
“So, what happened?”
He shook his head. “He didn’t take the bait. He asked for Trish’s phone number; told her he would call her in the morning. Can you believe that? Eighteen fuck’n years without pussy and he passes up a fuck like that. It ain’t natural!”
“It’s insulting,” I said.
“Damn straight, it’s insulting. What the hell? Did he think he was too good for her?”
“Maybe he knew?”
“What?”
“Maybe he knew who she was. You have a picture of her on the end table in your apartment. He probably noticed it.”
At once, a wave of cognition stole across his face, freezing his expressionless stare. He lowered his gun, letting his finger slip off the trigger. Since my return to prime, I have experienced spontaneous clairvoyance on many levels. There are times when witchcraft creeps into my conscience like a fog, showing me hints of other people’s secrets that no one else can see. Other times the visions hit me like a second sight, as if I were standing in the middle of events as they unfold. This was one of those times. In my mind, I could see the horrid events of what took place Monday night last, every vivid detail playing out in textural recall. After Adam sent Trish home from the bar, he went inside to confront his dad. The two talked quietly at first, but soon tempers flared. René suggested they take it outside, and it was there that things quickly spiraled out of control. I said to Adam, “You did not mean to shoot your dad, did you?”
He looked up at me, void of emotion. “I only wanted to scare him. I pointed the gun at him and told him I wanted my share of the money, and that I would not take no for an answer. He started toward me with his fist clenched. Next thing I knew, the gun went off. I didn’t know I pulled the trigger. It was an accident. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted my share of the money. I earned it after saving his life.”
“You saved his life?”
“I did, right there, practically where you’re standing.”
“Yes, I see now, you killed Johnny Buck.”
“You’re damn right, I did. I came up here in my boat.” He pointed the gun out toward the lake. “I came in the cabin through the back door. Johnny Buck and my dad were out front here arguing. I didn’t know they had robbed the armored truck a few days before. I just knew that Johnny had a gun on my father. He was yelling at him, wanting to know where the money was. Dad told him he would get his share, but—”
“But Johnny Buck didn’t believe him, did he?”
“No.”
“You thought he was going to shoot your dad.”
“He was going to shoot him.”
“So you went back and got the shotgun.”
“Yeah, I got the shotgun, came out here and shot Johnny Buck dead. Dad ran up and took the gun away from me. He told me to get back into the boat and to go home and wait for him there. I did, but he never came home. Later, the papers said that Johnny Buck died in the cabin fire, and that the money went up in flames with him. So, you see, he protected me. I saved his life and he saved mine.”
“Adam, your father’s death was an accident. Why don’t you come back to town with me and let me take your statement? I’m sure we can—”
“No!” Adam leveled the gun at me again. “I’m done waiting for what’s mine. Step away from the money or I will kill you.”
I sidestepped the hole I had been standing in front of and opened up a view for Adam to see into it. “It’s empty,” I said. “The money is not here.”
“What?” He moved in closer, directing me to step away further with a wave of his gun. “Let me see. What are you talking about?”
“Look for yourself. It’s not here. We found the money this morning in John Davis’ grave.”
“I don’t believe you. I got Trish’s text mail. She said she found the money.”
“I told you. Trish is in custody. We sent you that text. Now, what do you say you give me that gun and we’ll talk about—”
“No! I’m done talking. I ain’t saying anything.”
I began reaching under my coat, when Adam stiffened his arm and ordered me to freeze. I surrendered my hands to where he could see them both. “I’m not reaching for a weapon. I just want you to see something.”
He stared me down for a full ten count, and I could see in that time his curiosity deepening. “Okay, lose your gun first.”
“All right, I’m losing it, no problem.” Using my left hand, I slowly pinched my coat open and withdrew my weapon with my right.
&
nbsp; “Toss it,” he said, his chin directing his preference. I pitched it out into the woods with an underhand toss.
“Okay,” I said. “I want you to see this.” I repeated the move in reverse, slowly peeling back the other side of my coat to reveal a clip-on microphone attached to my shirt with a wire feed leading to a tape recorder tucked in the inside pocket. “I have your confession on tape, Adam. You might as well cooperate.”
“No.” He shook his head defiantly, sending an umbrella of water out in a centrifugal shower. “What you have is your own death warrant, Detective. Do you think I can let you go now?”
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
“Oh, I have a choice. I can ask you to get into that hole there and after I shoot you I can bury you using your own shovel.”
“You won’t get away with it.”
“Says who?”
I shot a look over his shoulder. “Says him.”
On that cue, Carlos stepped out from behind one of the burned out walls and drew his weapon down on Adam. “Drop it!” he ordered. “Police!”
Adam spun about in a blur, losing his balance in the soft mud while staggering back and laying down two shots at Carlos in quick secession. My ass puckered in anticipation of Carlos returning fire, but he did not. As Adam dug his heels in and caught his balance, he managed another two shots, both splintering charred wood only inches from Carlos’ head. In that split instant, I realized why Carlos had not returned fire. Adam had staggered directly between the two of us, placing me directly in Carlos’ line of fire. Instincts kicked in at once. I turned quickly and made a swan dive into the muddy hole in the earth behind me. I no sooner hit the bottom than I heard another two rounds popping nearly on top of one another. I knew that Adam had a five-shot revolver, and that he had already gotten four shots off on Carlos. Two more shots meant that Carlos had gotten off at least one on him.
The heavy rains kept the gun smoke low to the ground, enough so that I could smell it from down in the hole. What I did not know was if the smoke smelled like victory to me, or smelled like death. I rolled over onto my back and blinked up into the rain, knowing that my fate lay in the hands of the next man who looked into that hole. A long pause meant that Adam won the shootout and that he was retrieving Carlos’ gun to finish me off. A quicker discovery meant that Carlos won, and that the sight of me on my back in the mud would be the punch line to a joke that I would never hear the end of. Frankly, I could not decide which was worse.