The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "That's his story. I doubt they'll find a record of it. Bought on the street, most likely. And the tattoos suggest Kelly knows the streets."

  "Ballistics report in already?" Stubbs's white, tufty eyebrows are raised. "They know it was the Browning?"

  Bohannon shakes his head. "They can't find the bullet," he says. "But a paraffin test says Belcher shot the gun lately."

  "Oh, hell," Stubbs says.

  "He told Gerard it was to scare off a prowler," Bohannon says, "but he told me earlier it hadn't been fired."

  "You see why you have to pitch in and help him?" Stubbs says. "The fool's his own worst enemy. Always has been."

  "Not always," Bohannon says. "Once it was Uncle Sam."

  "Just a minute." Stubbs massages his white beard stubble thoughtfully. "Could the prowler have been Kelly?"

  Bohannon blinks surprise. "Well, I'll be damned," he says. "Good thinking, George. Why not?"

  * * *

  He swings into the ranch yard and in the headlights sees a brown sheriff's patrol car. Lights wink on top of it. Two doors stand open. Two people struggle beside it. He drives on hard toward them. One is T. Hodges, her helmet on the ground. The other is Kelly Larkin. He pushes T. Hodges backward so she falls. He turns and comes running directly at Bohannon's truck. From one wrist dangles a pair of handcuffs, glinting in the light. His shirt is torn down the back and slipping off his shoulders, showing his tattoos. Bohannon jams on the Gemmy's brakes, jumps down with a yell, and grabs the boy. Who twists and hits out with the handcuff-dangling fist. It knocks Bohannon's hat off.

  "Stop it," he says. "Stand still, damn it, Kelly."

  "Aw, let me go," the boy says. "I didn't do nothin'."

  "Then don't fight," Bohannon says. "There. That's better." He calls to T. Hodges, whom his headlights shine on. "You all right?"

  "Kelly…" she says in a menacing voice, and comes toward them.

  "I'm sorry," the boy says, hangdog.

  "I should think so." She is wiping dust off her helmet with her sleeve. "I was taking the cuffs off him. I told him I was sure I could trust him. And look what happened."

  "We'll just put them back," Bohannon says, and clips the cuffs on him again. "There." He picks up his hat. "Now, let's go into the kitchen, sit down, have some coffee, and talk this over civilized. All right?"

  "I don't know anything to talk about," Kelly says, stumbling along, Bohannon holding his arm. "This is crazy."

  They step up onto the long covered walkway that is the ranch-house porch. Bohannon looks over Kelly's head at T. Hodges. "Is it crazy?"

  "I don't think so," she says. "Not when you consider that his last name isn't Larkin—"

  "It could be," Kelly says. "It was my mom's name."

  Bohannon pulls open the kitchen screen door, they walk inside, and he hangs up his hat. The lamp on the table glows. "It's Belcher, right?"

  Kelly stares. "How did you know?"

  "Sit down," Bohannon says. He goes to the looming stove and picks up the speckled blue coffee pot. But T. Hodges comes and takes it out of his hand. "I'll do it," she says. "You talk to him."

  "This is going to get you into a mess with Gerard," he says.

  "We'll deal with Gerard later," she says.

  Bohannon drops onto a chair at the table and, as he lights a cigarette, studies the sulking boy. "You didn't happen in on me by accident, looking for work. You found out your father was here, and you wanted to see him, talk to him."

  "He left when I was four," Kelly says. "Walked out on my mom and me. Beat her up and walked out and never came back."

  "Which broke your mother's heart?" Bohannon asks.

  "Not exactly. She couldn't take it anymore. He was so mixed up and half out of his gourd from the war, all that killing, those nightmares, the way he'd scream and hide…" Tears shine in Kelly's eyes, and he drops his head and sniffles hard and wipes his nose with the back of one cuffed hand. "It wasn't his fault. I knew that. She knew it, too, but he wouldn't get help. The veterans, they're entitled to help, and he got some before they got married, but then he was happy, and it was all right for a while, but the horrors came back, you know? It started all over again. He couldn't keep a job, he started boozing all the time, throwing stuff, smashing stuff, hitting her—" The boy's voice breaks, and he shakes his head and looks at the floor.

  "And you came to get him to come home?" Bohannon asks.

  The boy nods, lifts his tear-shiny face. "It was years ago. And she needs him. She's always getting new men. And they're none of them any good. Highway trash. She's a waitress, works hard, they just take her money and lay around watching TV all day."

  "You think he's cured now?" T. Hodges brings coffee mugs into the light and sets them down for the two men. "Kelly, he doesn't work, either. Lives off his disability check."

  "Yeah." Kelly touches his coffee mug. "And hates everybody."

  "You talked to him?" Bohannon says.

  Kelly makes a face. "He wasn't happy to see me. It wasn't a good talk. Nothing like what I expected."

  " 'Dreamed,' you mean." T. Hodges sits down with her own coffee in the circle of lamplight. "Kelly, some things just aren't meant to be."

  Kelly blows steam off his coffee and gingerly tries it. "I wasn't giving up. I was going to take him back. I promised my mom. Take him back with me, and we'd be like we were in the seventies, a family. We had good times. He was okay then. Steady. Cheerful, even. A good dad. I really have missed him. Twenty years is a long time."

  "Granted," Bohannon says. "So you tried talking to him again?"

  "Three, four times. He ordered me off, told me to leave him the hell alone."

  T. Hodges hasn't done this for a long time, but now she reaches for Bohannon's Camels on the tabletop and lights one. In the slow-moving smoke that circles the lamp, she says, "And night before last?"

  "I couldn't sleep. I kept arguing with him in my head. Yeah, I went up there." Kelly doesn't look at her or at Bohannon. His voice is almost too low to be heard. "He took a shot at me."

  "You sure he saw you, knew who you were?"

  "Well, hell, how do I know?" Kelly says. "Think I stayed around to find out? He had a gun. You don't know how fast you can run till somebody shoots at you."

  "Uh-huh," Bohannon says. "And what did you stumble over?"

  "What?" Kelly sits very straight, eyes wide. "What?"

  "You were running scared, and you didn't watch where you were going, and you stumbled over the body of a man down on the road."

  "Hell," Kelly says. "How did you know?"

  "Your hands are scraped and scabby from falling on pavement," Bohannon says.

  "And I'm afraid," T. Hodges says, "the thought that jumped into your mind was that your father had killed that man, and that he'd changed more than you'd thought in those twenty years, and you were suddenly very much afraid of him."

  "And didn't want to stay anywhere near him anymore," Bohannon says. "You were on your way. Which is why you didn't take time even to write me a note."

  "I stopped to see Stubbs," Kelly says defensively.

  "Sixty-five miles down the road," Bohannon agrees. "And George didn't describe it as a long visit."

  "What will they do to my dad?" Kelly asks anxiously.

  "You love him in spite of everything," T. Hodges marvels.

  "Don't worry about him," Bohannon says. "I don't think he killed the man. But it would help if I knew who did."

  T. Hodges puts out her cigarette. "You didn't see anyone around there? An expensive car, maybe?"

  Kelly laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I was so scared I didn't see nothin'. Man, I was outta there. I mean, we're talkin' roadrunner here." They watch him without comment, and he pauses and blinks to himself seriously. "Wait. No. You're right. There was a car. Other side of the road. Mercedes. Parked wrong way."

  "No driver?" Bohannon says.

  "Not that I saw." Kelly turns pale. "The killer, you mean?"

  "The killer, I mean," Bohannon says.
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  * * *

  For a long time, he didn't want and didn't keep a phone by the bed, but when Stubbs got to the wheel-chair stage, it helped to have it there in case of emergencies. After Stubbs went to the nursing home, Bohannon just kept the phone. And now it rings. Early morning. He's overslept. He groans, gropes out, gets the receiver, and mumbles "Bohannon" into it.

  "The gun was the proud possession of the deceased," Gerard says. "Cedric Lubowitz. But the only fingerprints on it were Steve Belcher's."

  "The good news," Bohannon croaks, "and the bad news all in one package?"

  "No, the bad news is I know all about Teresa's activities last night, and she is on leave till this case is over with. I'm holding Kelly for at least seventy-two hours. The provenance of the gun suggests he could have been the killer. Motive, robbery. The vic's wallet hasn't turned up."

  "Kelly got money on him?"

  "Not very much," Gerard says. "You should pay your help better."

  "I'd have thought a man like Lubowitz would keep a couple hundred bucks cash on him." Bohannon throws off the blankets and sits on the edge of the bed. "Well, since you haven't got the wallet, that means it wasn't in the camper. And that clears Steve, anyway." He reaches to get a cigarette from his shirt which hangs on a painted straw-bottom Mexican chair. "Of course, you checked to see whether the killer threw the wallet away along the roadside."

  "That's what the citizens pay me for," Gerard says. "Me, not you, Hack. Will you stay out of this now?"

  "I keep trying," Bohannon says. "Don't worry. I haven't got time. Not with my stable hand in jail." And he hangs up.

  * * *

  "He didn't tell you about Lubowitz's car?" T. Hodges says. She is at the stove cooking breakfast for him again. Earlier, she cleaned out the box stalls, fed, watered, and groomed the horses while he slept. Now she puts plates of ham and eggs and fried mush on the table. "They found it at the Tides Motel on the beach where he was staying."

  Bohannon raises his eyebrows. "Not in the guest room at the beautiful home of his sister-in-law and her eternal friend Dr. Combs?" Bohannon pitches into his breakfast. Mouth full, he says, "So much for the love story motive."

  T. Hodges quietly pours syrup on her slabs of fried mush. "Don't jump to conclusions," she says. "His first night, they all had dinner together at the Brambles. Very pleasant. Fresh salmon, champagne. Lots of laughter and jokes about him sweeping Mary Beth off to Paris on the Concorde. The check went on his credit card."

  Bohannon chews a chunk of ham. "And afterward?"

  "The waiter at the Brambles said they took Mr. Lubowitz home with them afterward, for dessert, and to listen to some new Mozart CDs on the stereo. The motel says he didn't get back there until midnight."

  "Mozart. You remember when Steve Belcher camped up in the Mozart Bowl?" It's a little natural amphitheater among the pines in Sills Canyon. "Dr. Combs got on his case hot and heavy for that."

  T. Hodges laughs. "She'd taken some possible large contributors to the Canyon Mozart Festival up to see the place in all its unspoiled loveliness. Sasquatch was not what she'd expected to find. She could have killed him."

  "You don't mean that," Bohannon says.

  She wags her fork in denial. "Figure of speech. When our team examined the Lubowitz Mercedes," she says, "it had no fingerprints on it. Inside or out. Not the victim's, not anyone's."

  "A careful murderer," Bohannon says, and tries his coffee. "A schemer, a planner-ahead. Wore gloves. Nothing spontaneous about this killing, Teresa." He sets his cup down and lights a cigarette. "Nobody at the motel saw who returned the Mercedes?"

  She shakes her head. "Not the day man, not the night man. None of the guests Vern could find to question."

  "Yup," Bohannon says, looking across at the sunlit kitchen windows. They are open. Smells of sage and eucalyptus drift in on a cool breeze. The sky is clear blue above the ridges. "Craftily plotted. An organizing mind, used to managing people and events."

  "But insane," she says. "Cedric Lubowitz was a gentle old man."

  "Yup." Bohannon scrapes back his chair and goes to stand looking out the door. "Nobody's given me the medical examiner's findings. No, don't say it. Let me guess. He was shot at close range, right? Only a few feet. And through the chest. He was facing his killer. His killer was a friend."

  "He must have thought so." T. Hodges gathers up the plates and carries them to the sink. "What a horrible way to die."

  "Sure as hell too late to learn anything from it."

  Water splashes in the sink. "You go along and find out what you want to find out," she calls. "I'll look after things here."

  "On a day like this," he says, "there'll be lots of people wanting to go horseback riding. You'll be run off your feet."

  "Be careful," is all she says.

  And he takes down his hat and goes.

  * * *

  Steve Belcher sits on the bunk in his cell and glowers. Outside the windows, towering old eucalyptus trees creak in the breeze. Fat Freddie May stands leaning against the sand-colored cinderblock wall. Bohannon leans back against the bars. Down the way, someone is softly playing a harmonica. A hard song. "I'm comin' back, if I go ten thousand miles…" A dimestore mouth organ can't handle it, but the player keeps trying.

  Bohannon repeats his question: "You said there was a prowler, and you shot the gun to scare the prowler off. What did the prowler look like, Steve?"

  "How do I know? It was midnight. It was pitch dark."

  "Tall, short?" Bohannon says. "Thin, fat? Wearing what?"

  "I only heard him tramping around," Belcher says.

  May says in his gentle voice, "It was Kelly, wasn't it? Your son, Kelly?"

  "Oh, hell," Belcher says, and runs a hand down over his face. "Is he messed up in this, too, now?"

  "Since last night," Bohannon says. "He went up there, and you shot the gun off. So it was after Mr. Lubowitz was killed, after the killer threw the gun at your camper."

  But Belcher is shaking his shaggy head. "It wasn't him. This one was bigger. Taller. Heavier. Kelly's head is shaved. This one had hair."

  "That's all?" Bohannon asks. "Clothes? Voice? Anything?"

  "Went crashing down through the trees." Belcher grins. His teeth are in poor shape. "Maybe it was a bear."

  "You don't want to help us get you off the hook? Okay." Bohannon sighs, straightens, peers through the bars. "Vern?"

  Fred May says, "And Kelly. You don't want to help him?"

  A guard with a big gun in a holster on his hip comes and unlocks the cell door. Bohannon goes out, May after him. The door closes. They follow the guard along the hallway.

  And Belcher calls, "It could have been a woman."

  Bohannon doesn't break stride, but he smiles and says, "Ah!"

  * * *

  He noses the green pickup truck into a diagonal slot in front of the drugstore. A pair of sleepy old huskies with pale eyes look at him as he passes. One of them sniffs his boots. He pushes into the gleaming shop and stands looking for Mrs. Vanderhoop. There she is, at the back, by the prescription counter. When he nears, he sees she is talking with a bald little man who plays cello in local music ensembles. Mrs. Vanderhoop, wife of the pharmacist who owns the only drugstore in Madrone, is a busy part-time musician herself. Piano. Though Bohannon seems to remember she once sang. She sees him and gives him a smile, excuses herself to Mr. Cello, and comes to him, gray-haired, thin, running to homespun skirts, Navajo blouses, Indian jewelry.

  "Mr. Bohannon?" Her expression is concerned. "Isn't it terrible about that poor man, Liebowitz?"

  "Lubowitz," Bohannon says. "Listen. You can correct something I heard. That he came up here to see his sister-in-law, Mary Beth? Wouldn't he have seen her at her sister's funeral, his wife's funeral?"

  "Oh, no." Mrs. Vanderhoop shakes her head firmly. "Not that Mary Beth did not love her sister. But Dolores wouldn't allow it. They had a terrible argument about it. I came back for something I'd forgotten after a rehearsal. Mary Beth was in tears
."

  "I don't understand." Bohannon pushes back his hat. "I heard they were all close friends together when they were young."

  Mrs. Vanderhoops's smile is bleak. "Yes, well, for some of us, young was rather a long time ago. No, there was no love lost."

  "But they had dinner with Mr. Lubowitz only the night before he was killed," Bohannon says. "Very friendly and good-humored, I'm told. Laughing over old times."