“I was afraid this would happen,” he said, and the doctor who was kneeling on the floor by the body lifted his head, and the sheriff, standing against the background of the swastika turned. Dave said, “I telephoned your office at noon, sheriff. From Los Angeles. I suggested to your man Underbridge that he find her and guard her because she was in danger. He wouldn’t listen.”
The sheriff came to the door. “I’m Claude Rose. Who the hell are you?”
Dave gave his name and showed his license. “Didn’t Underbridge tell you about my call?”
“He may have logged it,” Rose said. “I didn’t look. What do you know about this?”
“That Vaughn Thomas, the man she was living with in Los Angeles, was shot and killed Sunday morning, and that as soon as she learned about it, she took her little boy and ran.” He peered at the dimness, felt alarm, and stepped into the room. “Where is he? Mike. Her son. Where is he? Did you send him off earlier?”
“We never saw him,” Rose said. “Are you sure—?”
And Dave pushed past him, stepping first into a hallway, banging open a bedroom door, calling, “Mike? Mike? Where are you? It’s okay, now. It’s over.” He knelt and looked under the rumpled bed—dust, beer cans, girlie magazines. He slid open a closet, groped inside. “Mike? You can come out now. The sheriff’s here. Everything’s under control.” No one was in the closet. When he turned to leave, Rose blocked the bedroom doorway.
“How come it’s you and not the LAPD?” he said.
“The LAPD decided Thomas’s death was a hunting accident. They didn’t even know of this girl’s existence. I learned about it from someone at his workplace and went to see her. Too late. Plainly she didn’t think it was an accident. She knew who killed him, or she knew why he was killed, and she ran off to hide. Nobody knew where. As soon as I knew for sure, I called Underbridge. And when he didn’t react, I drove down here. Too late again.” Dave pushed the goose-necked man aside. “Look, this can wait. We’ve got to find that boy. And pray he’s still alive.”
“What did she come here for?” Rose said.
“This was her home before she ran off with Thomas.”
“You mean this house?” Rose waved an arm. “You mean her and Barney Craig—”
“No, I mean she grew up in Winter Creek. She married here. Dallas Engstrom. Surely you’ve heard of Dallas Engstrom. Famous for busting up barrooms. A big, mean bastard with fists like hammers, and a truckload of guns?”
The sheriff nodded. “That’s how I come to know Barney. Engstrom beat hell out of him here last spring. Just before I got transferred here. There’s a warrant out for Engstrom.”
“Well, now you can use it,” Dave said. “He was angry at Jemmie for leaving him and taking Mike. And as soon as he heard from me she’d left Los Angeles, he headed down here.”
“What?” Rose scowled. “Then maybe Barney’s telling the truth, maybe it wasn’t him that killed her. Claimed he walked in and found her dead there on the floor. Called us right away. Says, would he call us and wait for us, if he done it? But we walk in, the fool is standing here staring down at her, with his own M-16 in his hand, just been fired, clip half empty. What would you think?”
“I’d want to know if he killed Vaughn Thomas. Was he up in L.A. Sunday morning? If not, why kill Jemmie? And why wait two days to do it? But we’re wasting time.” Dave turned away. “We have to find that little boy.”
“You sure he’s here?” Rose said. “My men went—”
“You take the other bedroom. I’ll check the kitchen.”
He didn’t have to. Hell—Rose’s deputies hadn’t even been back here. No way could they have missed the bloody little footprints that led Dave onto a screened back porch. Empty beer bottles in their dusty cardboard six-packs were stacked chest high. Dirty laundry, mostly khaki color, lay on a washer-drier pair. Through the screens, in the long backyard, under the corrugated iron roofs of open sheds, Dave glimpsed stacked lumber, bags of cement, cinder blocks, bundles of steel reinforcement rods, a cement mixer.
“Mike?”
The footsteps wobbled to a tall wooden storage cabinet. The doors were smeared with blood where little hands had pawed them. He yanked open the doors. The boy lay huddled, very pale, eyes closed, T-shirt and blue jeans soaked with blood, among cartons and crates. New and unopened. Dave crouched and touched him. Still warm. He bent close. Still breathing. Peanut butter and grape jelly on his breath. Not touching the small body, Dave searched with his eyes for wounds. He saw only a long slice in the scalp under the matted fair hair. Scalp wounds always bled badly. He called, “I found him, sheriff. Bring the doctor.”
He got to his feet and distractedly stared at the boxes in the cupboard. Rifle ammunition. Hand grenades. Mortar shells. Even a few guns, CHINA stenciled on the crates that smelled of pine. On the shipping labels was a name and street number in Los Angeles—World Militaria, Inc. No one was coming. He bent and reached for the child, remembered he mustn’t be moved, and stepped impatiently into the kitchen. “Doctor!” he shouted.
“I’d like to sell and get out of here,” Fern Casper said. She was frail, seventy, dressed in faded jeans, tennis shoes, and a red sweatshirt. Her hair was cropped short. Not artfully—serviceably, probably by herself, with hedge clippers. She had let Dave into her shabby kitchen, and they sat drinking tea at a sticky table where the plates and utensils from many meals were stacked. Also half a dozen dried-out Dinty Moore beef stew cans. A large white hen stalked around the grimy linoleum, clucking to herself. Her sister rested on top of the refrigerator. Fern Casper pulled the dripping bag out of her tea and laid it in a stained saucer. “Something like this was bound to happen. I seen it coming when George Hetzel started training boys in his woods. Them uniforms started appearing in the streets, in the stores. Now they even carry their guns, bold as brass. There was one used to drive around town in a buzzy little red roadster, shooting his gun off in the air.” She shook her head. “That’s when I put up a ‘For Sale’ sign.”
“I don’t blame you.” Dave tasted the tea and by reflex reached into the leather jacket. “May I smoke?”
“Nope.” She grinned, not quite but almost toothlessly. “Not unless you give me one.”
Dave held out the pack. “Are you sure you’re eighteen?”
“I’ll take a couple of these while I’ve got the chance,” she said, and took six. When he lit the first of them for her, she inhaled deeply, leaned back in the straight kitchen chair, and closed her eyes in contentment. “Ah,” she said. Then she let the smoke out and looked at him again. “I don’t buy ’em anymore—they slapped a twenty-five-cent tax on last year, you know, and I’m trying to live on Social Security.” She sucked greedily on the Marlboro again. “Why, when I was a girl, they was only fifteen cents for the whole pack, taxes included.”
“I remember,” Dave said.
“I never stopped smoking,” she said. “And I never will. I just have to go a longer time between puffs, is all.” Her gnarled fingers touched the white tubes on the table, lining them up neatly. “I appreciate these.”
“There are laws against carrying firearms,” Dave said. “And laws against shooting them in the streets.”
“Laws!” she scoffed. “Sheriff here before, that died, Ron Lutz—he was close with Hetzel as two peas in a pod. And this new one, Rose—he’s scared to death of the man.”
“He’s not alone, is he?” Dave said. “None of your neighbors will talk to me.”
“Barney Craig is high up in Hetzel’s outfit,” she said, “and yes, they’re scared of Hetzel. So are most folks in Winter Creek. Only one I heard of that isn’t—he’s a black man, and he ought to be. Alexander’s his name, professor, or something. They burned a cross in his front yard. Killed his dog. Hounded his children out of school. But he won’t budge.” She smoked her cigarette for a silent moment, drank some tea, set down the cup. “Some others pretend to laugh Hetzel off and call him a nut case—which, of course, he is. But there’s fear under
the laughter. And when somebody dies and it connects to Hetzel, not many in Winter Creek are likely to answer questions about it, yours or the sheriff’s either. They’re afraid they’ll get shot too.”
“Not you,” Dave said.
She said, “That’s ’cause I haven’t got any answers.”
“You didn’t see who went in there this afternoon?”
She shook her head. “I heard the shots, that was all.”
“Barney Craig claims he came in a few minutes later, found her dead, killed with one of his rifles.”
“Maybe. I didn’t see him. Truth is, I’m mostly back here. Since my television broke down, I don’t go in the front room hardly at all. My bedroom’s just across the hall from here, bathroom beside it. So I don’t know what goes on on the street out front unless it makes a loud noise. And if it makes a loud noise—like them shots—I figure it’s smarter to stay where I am, out of sight.”
“You didn’t know that Jemmie, the dead girl, was living there?” Dave said. “You didn’t see or hear the little boy?”
“Barney Craig’s been part of Hetzel’s outfit for years now,” she said, and gently tapped ashes off her cigarette into a greasy soup bowl. “He’s my neighbor, so if we chance to meet, of course I say hello—but I steer clear of him if I can, and when I have to go out front to get the mail or put out the trash, I don’t even look his way. I mind my own business, and hope he’ll mind his.”
“His partner,” Dave said. “Dallas Engstrom?”
“The tall one with the long, yellow hair.” She nodded. “Worse than Craig by a country mile. Barney’s a worry with all them guns. But Engstrom—he was deadly just with his fists. And I think Vietnam did something to his mind. It did to a lot of boys, you know—I seen that on the TV. They just never get right in their heads again, some of them. Sad.” She thought about this glumly for a moment, then went on. “You know, Dallas turned on Barney—best friends they was, I used to see them over there, laughing together, never a cross word between them—and he near beat him to death, here, not too long ago.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Wouldn’t be likely to beat up a little old lady, I guess, but all the same, I breathed easier when I heard he left town.”
“He’s back in town,” Dave said. “It’s possible he was the one who murdered Jemmie. They were married, you know.”
“I guess I knew that once,” Fern Casper said. “I forget things lately. Pratt girl, wasn’t she, just out of high school? Ran off to Las Vegas?”
“And six years later,” Dave said, “the same night her husband beat up Barney Craig and threatened to beat her too, she ran off with another man.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The old woman nodded but had she heard? Pinching the tip of the cigarette between long, dirty nails, she pulled the last smoke out of the butt, then regretfully snubbed the little coal out in the soup bowl. She looked at Dave for a moment as if she didn’t know how he came to be there. Then her eyes cleared and she said, “I wouldn’t want him to be jealous of me. Not Dallas Engstrom.”
Dave stood up, pushing back his chair and startling the hen who’d come to rest under it. She squawked and flapped away. The one on the refrigerator stood up for a minute, surprised, then settled down again. Dave said, “If you see him, telephone the sheriff, will you?”
“No,” she said, with that impish three-fanged smile. “Haven’t got a phone.” She stood up, nowhere near as tall as his shoulder, and touched him with a grubby hand. “Just a joke. I’ll run next door to the Huffstatlers.”
“Thank you.” Dave pushed open the screen door. The big white hen ran out between his legs. “Even if they wouldn’t talk to me, maybe the neighbors will talk to you. See what you can learn, and I’ll come back tomorrow, if I may?”
“You better—I’ll be out of smokes by then.”
He bought a carton of cigarettes in the drugstore, a place as shiny with glass and chrome and cold fluorescent lighting as if it were in L.A.—Johnny Walker, a pack of throw-away razors, a can of shave cream, toothbrush, tooth powder, a stick of deodorant, a pack of T-shirts, a pack of shorts, two pairs of half wool, half nylon socks. In the toy department he plucked from a rack of green wire a couple of plastic-bubbled cardboards, one holding a Transformer tank, the other a Transformer cement mixer truck. In another part of the store, he negotiated a bigger purchase, but that he left behind for the manager to dispose of.
He took the rest in a white plastic sack to a motel called the Ranchero, built of cement bricks with lots of runny mortar, all painted very white under a red roof whose tiles were not tiles. The metal boxes of air-conditioning units stuck out of every window and dripped on the long cement walkways. He bought a bag of ice cubes from a machine in an alcove. He showered, put on the new underwear, took the sanitary wrap off a plastic glass and dropped ice cubes into the glass and poured whiskey over them. Then he sat down on a bed under a framed print of Charlie Russell cowboys branding calves, lit a cigarette, stretched out, and phoned the TV station in L.A.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“It’s gone away,” Cecil said. “I’m okay now. Thanks. How are things down there?”
Dave told him how things were.
“Maybe Mike saw who it was,” Cecil said.
“I hope so,” Dave said. “Because if any of the neighbors did, they’re not saying.”
“You think it was Engstrom?”
“He lied to me about where he was the morning Vaughn Thomas was killed,” Dave said, “but that doesn’t have to mean he killed him. And if he didn’t, if he wasn’t afraid Jemmie could implicate him, why would he kill Jemmie?”
Cecil said, “Could finding her living with Barney drive him to it?”
“Maybe. He’s got a short fuse,” Dave said, “but beating your buddy and your wife is one thing—murder’s another. I don’t know—it doesn’t feel right to me. And nobody’s seen Engstrom here. If he showed, somebody should have noticed. He’s conspicuous, and everybody’s afraid of him.” Dave sighed, took a drag from his cigarette. “I’ll be going to the hospital later to talk to Mike. They expect him to come to by evening. He’s in shock, lost a lot of blood, and the bullet gave him a concussion. He’s only five years old. He may not remember anything.” Dave raised himself on an elbow and took a drink of the whiskey. Johnny Walker Red had been his father’s brand. He hadn’t tasted it in years. It brought back memories of days long lost, good days, when he was young, younger anyway, and when a lot of people he cared about were still alive who were alive no longer. Max Romano for one. Damn. Memories were ambushing him too often these days. A foolish, fond old man. He drew a deep, steadying breath and said to Cecil, “What’s happening at your end?”
“The police have changed their minds about Kaminsky. Now they’re saying he didn’t fall, after all.”
“I never thought he did,” Dave said.
“You thought somebody pushed him, right?”
Dave blinked at the receiver. “And the police don’t?”
“There was tar on the soles of his shoes. He went up to the roof, Dave. It’s a flat roof, and it was resurfaced recently. He walked across it, then he stood on the raised edge, on the tiles. His shoe prints are plain, there. He jumped, Dave.”
“Somebody had a gun in his back,” Dave said.
“There was only one set of footprints in the tar. Dave—Kaminsky committed suicide.”
When Dave walked into the Twin Oaks Café at sunset, news was yapping from a radio back of the counter. Clarice called, “Mr. Death Claims?” and pointed to a booth in a corner. “Sit there, so’s I can wait on you.” He sat in the booth and laid the Stetson beside him on the cracked red plastic seat pad. The sun shone in his eyes. She came, set down a jingling glass of ice water for him, leaned across, and tugged a cord that lowered a rattling bamboo blind. “You was right,” she said. “Dallas come and killed his wife, like you said, and now”—her voice wobbled, a tear ran down her face, she wrung her hands—“Barney’s in jail for it.”
“You’ve
seen Dallas, someone told you they saw him?”
She shook her head, took a paper napkin from the square shiny dispenser on Dave’s table, and blew her nose, and dried her tears. “But it had to be him, didn’t it? Crazy murdering son of a bitch. Why’d she have to come back here, anyways, and bring him tagging after her?”
“That part I’m sure she didn’t plan,” Dave said.
Clarice laughed a shaky vengeful laugh. “Well, she’s damn sorry now, if she did or if she didn’t.”
“So am I.” Dave reached for a red plastic folder that held a menu card behind yellowed plastic. He took reading glasses from his jacket, put them on, peered at the handwritten list. “What’s to eat?”
“You’re a cool one, aren’t you?” she said.
“In my line of work,” he said, “it doesn’t help to get emotional. It interferes with thinking.”
“It was Barney’s gun,” she said bitterly. “They’ll never let him off.”
Dave peered up at her over the glasses. “I thought you and Barney had split up.”
“Oh, we had some silly argument,” she said. “I can’t even remember what it was about, now. TV or baseball or something. But then Dallas near killed him, and he landed up in the hospital. And the way I felt when I heard—well it come to me he was the only man I cared about in the world. And I run over there and told him I loved him, and I’d stick by him, and he mustn’t die. And that was it. We been seeing each other regular ever since.”
“Dallas didn’t know that.” Dave folded and put away the glasses. “His old jealousy of Barney must have flared up again today, when he found Jemmie hiding there.”
“That poor, dumb girl might still be alive,” she said, “if you’d have let me phone Barney and warn him.”
“She wouldn’t have answered, and he wasn’t at home,” Dave said. “He was out on a job site. Waiting for laborers who never showed up. So he told the sheriff.”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 8