Stalking Horse (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “Mr. Ferguson will see you now.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I opened the door and found myself in a spacious office that offered a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay, with Alcatraz to the right, the Golden Gate Bridge to the left and the Marin headlands in the background. The bay was a bright, sparkling blue, scattered with tiny white sails and slow-moving merchant ships.

  Standing behind his desk, Ferguson gestured me to a seat, smiled perfunctorily and sat down again in his big black leather swivel chair. He was about forty years old, a heavyset man with big shoulders, a squared-off face and dark hair carelessly combed. He was in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, cuffs rolled up twice, exposing thick, hairy forearms. He looked about thirty pounds overweight; his belly bulged over his belt, and his face was pale and jowly. But, despite his flaccid appearance, he conveyed a remorseless sense of restless purpose: an executive’s executive, a man who used power as deftly and skillfully as a surgeon used his scalpel—and just as impersonally, just as ruthlessly. His eyes, too, were impersonal. In a lineup, rumpled and unshaven, glowering at the lights, he would look dangerous: a murderer’s murderer.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much time, Lieutenant. But I wanted to take a few minutes and talk to you, separate from Richter.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What d’you make of these letters?” he asked. “What kind of a threat do you think they represent to Senator Ryan?”

  “I think that we’ll know more when we get the next letter.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I think it’s possible that the writer is after something. He’s building up to something that we don’t know about yet.”

  He frowned. “Building up to what?”

  “Money, maybe.”

  “Hmm.” He stared at me briefly, dubiously thinking about it.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions.” As I said it, I thought about the list I’d prepared at Hickman’s suggestion. I decided that since I wasn’t interested in impressing Ferguson, I’d leave the list in my pocket.

  “All right,” he said, waving permission. “Ask.”

  “I understand that it’s not uncommon for the senator to get threatening letters.”

  He frowned again, drawing his heavy eyebrows together. “He gets lots of hostile mail. But out-and-out death threats, that’s something else.”

  “He has received death threats, though.”

  “Yes. Maybe one a year. No more.”

  “How are they handled?”

  “They’re turned over to the FBI, and also to the Secret Service. As these letters were.”

  “I gather that the FBI and the Secret Service are taking these letters more seriously than some others. Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask them, Lieutenant. Ask Richter.”

  “I’ve already done that,” I said. “Now I’d like to question the members of the senator’s family.”

  “You mean question them about the letters?”

  “Yes.”

  Quickly, he shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because word would get back to the senator.” He shot me a hard, appraising look. “Haven’t you been briefed on the senator’s health?”

  “Yes, I have. But I assumed that his family knows about his heart attack.”

  “Certainly they know.” He spoke impatiently, looking at me with cold calculation. Clearly, he was deciding whether I was the right man for the job I’d been given.

  “Well, then, assuming that they want to protect him from stress, doesn’t it make sense that they’d keep news of the letters from him?”

  He looked at me for another long, coldly calculating moment. Finally he drew a deep breath, at the same time hunching his shoulders and leaning across the desk, drawing closer. He’d made his decision.

  “There are only three members of the senator’s immediate family—his wife, Belle, his son, James, and his daughter, Susan. Now—” He lowered his voice to a note of solemn warning as he said, “Now, what I’m going to tell you is confidential, Lieutenant. Very confidential. Do you understand?”

  Meeting his eyes, I spoke quietly. “I know lots of secrets, Mr. Ferguson. It goes with the territory.”

  “Yes. Well—” He drew another deep breath. Apparently Ferguson was in the habit of using deep, theatrical sighs to emphasize whatever he considered extremely important. “Well, the fact is—the truth is—that the senator’s wife has a drinking problem. It’s, ah, very common in Washington, as you may know. I mean, without being dramatic about it, politics for a man like Donald Ryan is an all-consuming thing. It’s his whole life. And when that happens, the wife sometimes loses her way. It’s sad, when it happens. And, of course—” His voice changed to a smoother, more unctuous note. “Of course, both the senator and Mrs. Ryan are fighting as hard as they can to lick this thing. But until they do lick it, the truth is that it’s just not wise to confide in Mrs. Ryan.”

  “You’re saying that she wouldn’t keep the secret.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s correct. It’s a simple matter of security.” With the hardest part over, he spoke more briskly. “As for James, the senator’s son, he works on the senator’s staff as a legislative assistant. James is thirty, and he’s only just gotten involved in politics after trying—” He hesitated. “After trying other things first. So although the senator hopes James will eventually be an important part of his organization, at the moment that just isn’t the case.” He paused, watching me for a reaction.

  “What you’re saying is that you don’t trust him with important decisions.”

  A smile touched Ferguson’s hard, humorless mouth. “Yes, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Yes, that’s it. Exactly.”

  “So James doesn’t know about the letters.”

  “No, he doesn’t. However, at this point, I think I’ll have to put him in the picture. After all, he’s bound to realize that something’s up. So I suppose there wouldn’t be any objection to your talking to him.”

  “What about the daughter? Susan? What’s her story?”

  “Ever since she was a teenager,” he said, “Susan has gone her own way. I suppose you’d call her a child of the sixties, a rebel without a cause. She married too young. In fact, she married twice. She’s recently divorced for the second time. So you see, she’s not exactly close to the senator, at least not during this part of her life. She’s got her own problems.”

  “Susan isn’t in the picture, then.”

  “No. She knows about her father’s heart attack, naturally. But she doesn’t know about the letters.”

  “And Susan lives in San Francisco.”

  He grimaced slightly. “When she’s not traveling, she lives in San Francisco.”

  “Will Mrs. Ryan and Susan be present at the dedication?”

  “Yes, they will. The senator and Mrs. Ryan will be arriving tomorrow, in fact. And Susan has promised to be in town.”

  “You’ve been in touch with Susan, then.”

  “I haven’t, personally. But it’s been taken care of.”

  I wondered whether the senator or his wife had taken care of it, but decided not to ask. Instead, I rose to my feet, saying, “I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Ferguson. If I need anything, can I call you?”

  “Either me or Duane Hickman. I’ll alert the girls who handle incoming calls.” Also on his feet, he said, “You understand, Lieutenant, that the most important consideration is to keep all this from the senator. It’s essential that we don’t subject him to—”

  His phone rang. As I turned to go, he raised a detaining hand. He wasn’t finished with me yet.

  “Yes?” he said, speaking sharply into the phone. I saw him listen for a moment, then saw his eyes involuntarily widen with surprise. “Yes,” he said again, his eyes now seeking mine. Plainly, the call concerned our business at hand. “Yes—” He sat down again, saying, “Put her on.” Then: “Hello, Susan. I just arrived in town. I w
as going to call you. What’s the problem?” Asking the question, his manner was smoother, more conciliatory. Obviously he was speaking to the boss’s daughter. Another moment of silence followed as he sat with the phone to his ear. Now he turned away to glower at his spectacular view of the city. Finally: “I’m very sorry to hear that, Susan.” He paused, listening. “Yes, we’re aware that there’s someone who’s been threatening your father. And, in fact, I’ve got someone right here who’s working on it. He’s Lieutenant Hastings of the San Francisco Police Department. He—” Another pause, while his eyes once more sought mine, more speculatively now. “Yes,” he said, “I understand. Listen, Susan, why don’t I have Lieutenant Hastings come over and talk to you? Shall I?” A final pause. “All right, I’ll send him right over. Then we’ll talk again, before your parents arrive. Yes. Fine. Goodbye.”

  Thoughtfully, he cradled the phone as he swiveled in his chair to face me.

  “That was the senator’s daughter,” he said slowly. “Someone just called her, she says—” He let it go unfinished as he rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand. He’d just had an unpleasant surprise.

  “She says that the caller told her she might be able to save her father’s life. She says he’ll call again.”

  I took out my ball-point pen and flipped open my notebook. “What’s her address?”

  Six

  SHE LIVED IN A new townhouse, one of scores built in recent years across the top of Twin Peaks. The houses were small but expensive: concrete, redwood and glass, each one with a soaring view of the Bay Bridge and the Oakland hills beyond, with a sliver of the South Bay showing in the foreground, along with the huge skeletal cranes of the Hunter’s Point shipyard. Because of its chronic wind and periodic fog, and because of the steep, rocky terrain that made building difficult, Twin Peaks was the last part of San Francisco to be turned into big money by the city’s real estate developers.

  As I turned away from the view, took out my badge and pressed the doorbell button, all in one long-practiced motion, I realized that I’d forgotten Susan Ryan’s married name. I looked for a mailbox, but couldn’t find a name.

  The intricately carved oak door opened on a chain. “Yes?”

  I held up the badge. “I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings. I’ve just come from Mr. Ferguson’s office.”

  “Just a minute.” Her voice was low and husky. She closed the door, then opened it wide. “Come in.” She was a tall, slim woman, dark-haired, wearing leather sandals, blue jeans and a khaki shirt over the jeans. Her hair was long, worn in a ponytail. Like her body, her face was long and lean, strongly sculpted, with a broad forehead and dark, flaring eyebrows. Her mouth was a little too large for the face, and her nose was a little too thin and too long. But the wide, strong line of her jaw was intriguing, and I could see a challenge in her clear blue eyes. It was a bold face, both willful and aristocratic, the face of an intelligent woman.

  She gestured to a short flight of stairs and preceded me up to the living room, where she motioned me to a seat. Her body moved quickly and smoothly, suggesting a restless energy.

  Still standing, she took a long, calm moment to look me over before she asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No. But you have something.”

  She shook her head and sat down in a high-backed vintage wooden chair with lion heads carved on the arms, and claws on the feet. As I took out my notebook and pen, I glanced around the room. The architecture was simple and modern, with one wall of glass facing the view. But the furnishings included a little of everything: modern, antique, European and Chinese. The walls were covered with a museum-class collection of paintings, most of them large and abstract.

  “First of all,” I said apologetically, “I have to ask what your name is. Your married name, I mean.”

  “It’s Robinson. Susan Robinson.” She crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back in her medieval chair. With her hands resting on the carved lion heads, chin raised, she looked calm and confident, in complete control. Her blue eyes gazed steadily into mine.

  “Are you listed in the telephone book?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It’s listed as F.R. Robinson, which is—was—my husband’s name.”

  “How long have you lived here, Mrs. Robinson?”

  “We moved in about a year and a half ago. And my husband moved out about six months ago.” She spoke calmly, indifferently.

  “When did you get the phone call?”

  “About ten-thirty this morning.”

  “And you called Mr. Ferguson a little before two o’clock.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you call anyone else? Your father or mother? Your brother?”

  “No,” she answered quietly, looking me squarely in the eye. “I didn’t call anyone else.”

  I thought I could hear a faint note of regret in her voice, as if she were admitting to some shameful secret. Was it possible that, besides Ferguson, there was no one else she could call? What did a frightened woman do when her father was an institution, and her mother was a drunk, and her brother lived in Washington and her husband wasn’t around? Whom could she turn to for aid and comfort?

  “What did this caller say?” I asked, poising pen over paper.

  “He said—” She cleared her throat, impersonally reciting, “He said, ‘Is this Susan Ryan?’ I said I was, and he said, ‘Then I have a message for your father. Tell him that he only has a few more days to live.’”

  “That was it? Everything?”

  She shook her head. “No, that was the—the prepared text, you might say. I said, ‘Who is this?’ Or, more like it, ‘Who the hell is this?’”

  “What did he say to that?”

  She frowned. “I can’t remember exactly. I’ve tried to remember, but I can’t. I should’ve written it down. It was something like, ‘I’m a friend of the family.’ Anyhow, the implication was that he was—” She hesitated, searching for the phrase. “He seemed to be implying that he was close to the family—close to me.”

  “Did you question the caller about what he said? Ask him to clarify it?”

  “No, I didn’t. I have to say that, initially, I didn’t take it very seriously. After all—” She raised one hand in a gesture of futility. “After all, my father’s been in politics ever since I can remember. I’ve always known that he got crank calls, and crank mail. I’ve taken a few of the calls myself, in the past.”

  “What made you take the call seriously, then?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered thoughtfully. “Maybe it was the—the menace I felt after I hung up and thought about what he’d said. The menace, and the purposefulness.” She shook her head. “I don’t know—I’m not sure.”

  “Did you make any response at all when he said he was close to you? Did you try to draw him out?”

  “No. I’m afraid I wasn’t very smart,” she admitted ruefully. “I remember asking him again who he was. He didn’t answer. He just repeated the first message, as if he were reading it. And at that point, I’m afraid that I got mad. I said—” Her wide, expressive mouth twitched in a half smile. “I said, ‘Fuck off, asshole,’ if I remember correctly.” Repeating the phrase, she spoke with finishing-school precision. A hint of bawdy humor glinted in her eyes. “Then I hung up,” she finished. “Hard.”

  Smiling in return, I asked, “How many phones do you have?”

  “Two. One here—” She pointed. “And one in the bedroom.”

  “I’d like to put a tap on your phone line.”

  She shrugged. “All right, if it’ll help.”

  “What was your impression of the caller?” I asked.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean was he young or old, educated or uneducated? What kind of a voice did he have? How’d he strike you?”

  “He struck me as being very purposeful, as I said. Very hard, very determined. As far as education goes—” She looked absently a
way, nibbling at her lower lip with small white teeth. “I’d say he was certainly literate. I mean, he spoke well enough. It wasn’t Oxford English, but it wasn’t gutter talk either.”

  “Did he talk like a crazy man, would you say? Did he rave?”

  Decisively, she shook her head. “No. Just the opposite, in fact. He was very much in control. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he said it.”

  “Was he young? Old?”

  “It’s difficult to say.”

  “Make a guess.”

  She shrugged, then smiled faintly. “How about middle-aged? Forty, say.”

  I put my notebook aside, looked at her for a moment and then decided to ask, “Did he frighten you?”

  “Not at the time,” she answered. “Mostly I was angry at having my privacy invaded. But then I thought that I should tell someone about it. Which I did. Apparently Jack Ferguson takes it seriously. So do you.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” I said, and when she asked what I meant, I told her about the letters. To my surprise, her response was a grim smile.

  “You don’t seem worried,” I said quietly.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, “that, emotionally, I’m pretty much a burnt-out case where my father is concerned.”

  “You don’t feel very close to your father. Is that it?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” she answered regretfully. “I’m afraid that’s exactly it.”

  “May I ask why?”

  She let another long, deliberate moment pass, staring straight into my eyes. Then, calmly, she said, “I’m twenty-eight years old, Lieutenant, and I’ve just realized that I’m a pretty typical poor little rich girl. All my life I’ve been surrounded by so much money, and so much power, and so much pure establishment bullshit, that I’ve never had a chance to form even the faintest idea of who I really am. My brother has the same problem, only worse. Because he’s quit fighting and settled in under my father’s shadow. He’ll die there, trying to do his impression of his father, and his grandfather, and his great-great-grandfather.”

  “But you’re trying to break away.”