Dave said, “If not drugs, what?”
Cecil made a sound, set down his mug, spread open the contest announcement sheet again. He ran a long finger down the lists of winners, blinking over it, sat straight. “No luck. No Vaughn Thomas among the winners.”
Dave laughed and shook his head. “He’s a member of the family, and for a short time during the Sweepstakes, he was an employee of Thomas Marketing. That rules him out twice.”
“So? What am I doing with this list?”
Dave said, “Playing a long shot. The Sweepstakes is the only source of sudden money close to Vaughn I know of.”
Cecil said, “But if he couldn’t touch it—”
“Let me think.” Dave drank coffee, lit a cigarette, turned the slim steel lighter over in his fingers, staring at it, brooding. At last he looked up. “What about blackmail?”
Cecil jerked his head back in surprise. “Whoa. You saying Vaughn knew something sleazy about somebody on this list? But how? He left Thomas Marketing weeks ago. How would he know who the winners were going to be?”
“Talk to Neil O’Neil. Maybe he noticed something while Vaughn was working with him. Maybe it ties to Vaughn’s quitting so suddenly.” Dave gulped the hot coffee, set down the mug, got to his feet. “Regardless—check out some of the winners,” he said. “See what turns up. One of them might play paintball. Ah, hell, maybe it won’t answer my question, but it will make good TV.” He went to the cookshack door. “Your viewers will love it.” He opened the door. “Everybody daydreams about coming into sudden wealth.”
“What was Vaughn going to do with it?” Cecil asked. “Give it to Hetzel, the way he did his mother’s legacy?”
“Mike said Vaughn told him Hetzel was the enemy,” Dave answered. “No—he was going to move to Africa.”
“Maybe he got the money,” Cecil said, “and that was why he was murdered. Maybe he had it on him Sunday morning.”
Dave shook his head. “The payoff wasn’t till Tuesday.”
“You going to nail Alexander?” Cecil said bleakly.
“Look on the bright side.” Dave went back to him and gave him a kiss. “I also plan to nail Hetzel, the Black Man’s Friend.” And he left the cookshack, smiling.
15
DAVE SAID, “BIGGEST ONE-NIGHT motel bill I ever paid. Nine hundred seventy-six dollars.” He sat in the sheriff’s substation in Winter Creek again. The door to the outside was propped open and a breeze came in, smelling of sage and eucalyptus and promising a warm day. “And the room was nothing to speak of. No view at all.”
It was breakfast time again. Claude Rose munched a Danish pastry and washed it down with coffee from an outsize styrofoam cup. “And you never even reported it. You should have reported it. I could have took fingerprints. I’d love to lock up them skinheads.”
“What I’m reporting is the gun, my Sig Sauer,” Dave said. “Hetzel will have it. I want it back.”
“What did it cost you?” Rose said.
“That’s not the point,” Dave said. “It’s the only gun I ever owned. I’m against guns. They give too many people power who have no right to it. Guns cancel out intelligence, reason, decency, civility, and put terror in their place. I got along without a gun most of my working life. But a man can’t buck the odds forever. About five years back I bought the Sig Sauer. I’m used to it. And I don’t know that I’m morally prepared to buy another one.”
“For Hetzel to admit he’s got it,” Rose said, “will be to admit he was behind them that wrecked your motel room. He won’t do that, will he? Cost him too much money.” Rose sighed. “Hell, I suppose if you say so, I’ve got to try.” He picked up a pencil. “It got a number on it?”
Dave recited the number for him and Rose wrote it down. Dave said, “Look at it this way—it’s another excuse for you to hassle him without him getting pissed at you, since it’s my doing.” He lit a cigarette. “How’s Underbridge?”
“Still in intensive care,” Rose said grimly. “Like they say, guarded. His condition is guarded.” He peered at Dave. “How’s your head? I see you took the bandage off.”
“I forgot about it,” Dave said. “And it came off in the shower. I’m not sorry. My hair covers the wound, and I’m spared telling a long, stupid story over and over again.”
“Did I thank you for trying to save my bacon?”
“Don’t mention it.” Dave reached and pulled the glass ashtray across the desk. It was washed and polished and there were no pipe dottles in it yet. “It wasn’t one of my better moves. I’m too old for that stuff now.”
“I know what you mean.” Rose crumpled up the wrapper from the pastry and threw it away. He licked his fingers and wiped them on a little paper napkin and threw that away too. “Biggest lie in the bunch is ‘You’re as young as you feel.’ Hell, I wake up every morning feeling eighteen—right up to the time I ask my body to get out of bed.”
Dave said, “Did you question Mike? What did he say about Ralph Alexander’s visit Monday morning?”
Rose barked a laugh. “He come about the sprinkler system for his front yard. Seems it was supposed to be in and working before he moved into the place. And Barney Craig was the contractor. And Alexander kept phoning him, putting messages on his machine, but Barney never returned the calls. So finally, Alexander drove by early to catch him and says, ‘When are you going to put in my blankety-blank sprinkler system?’ and Barney says he’s too busy to get around to it, and Alexander better call somebody from over in Fortuna to do the job.”
“Because nobody in Winter Creek would be caught dead working for a black man? Least of all Barney Craig, George Hetzel’s good right arm?”
“Well, of course, little Mike didn’t say that.” Rose rattled open a desk drawer and brought out his stem-chewed pipe. Dave slid the ashtray over to him, and he knocked the dottle from the pipe into the ashtray, and then filled the pipe from the worn suede pouch. “But if you was out there to see Alexander, you know his is the only house around that got finished. The developer, Horace Thalberg, is one of Hetzel’s heavy contributors. He didn’t know Alexander wasn’t white until he’d moved down here—the whole transaction was took care of by a Los Angeles bank.”
Rose chuckled and lit his pipe.
“It made Horace so mad he damn near had a stroke. I know. He was in here storming around, wanting me to arrest Alexander and throw him off the property for getting it by fraud and misrepresentation. No use, of course. Law says it don’t matter what color you are, you can live where you like. So Horace stopped work on the other houses, and put them and the land on the market, because he’s convinced nobody with the kind of money them places cost would want to move in next door to coloreds.” Rose’s pipe hadn’t lit well. He used his long-flamed lighter on it. Aromatic smoke clouded the air. “Looks like everybody agrees with him—he hasn’t found no takers. But he’ll go bankrupt before he’ll change his attitude.”
“Was Mike in the front room when Alexander paid his visit?” Dave asked. “Did Alexander see him?”
“No. I was particular to ask that. And about his mother, too—Jemmie. No, they was in the kitchen, and the door was shut. No way Alexander could’ve knowed they was there. And if that don’t put him in the clear, I checked out all the car rental agencies in Fortuna. He never rented no little gray compact—not Tuesday nor any other day.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Dave said.
“Me too,” Rose said. “He’s one of them people you was talking about—civilized. Met him a couple times. We don’t get a lot like him down here. The rich ones, yes, but the bright ones, no. Writes books, did you know that? And George Hetzel—how he’d have gloated if it turned out Ralph Alexander, Ph.D., was a killer. Be proof, wouldn’t it, he’s been right all along about black people—nothing but animals.”
“Unlike those model specimens, Engstrom and Craig.”
Rose chuckled and coughed pipe smoke. “And since it was one of Hetzel’s boys he murdered, it’d also show the world the b
lacks were killing off the whites and taking the country away from them, way he always claims.”
“Vaughn Thomas was living in fear those last weeks in Los Angeles,” Dave said. “Afraid to answer his phone at work. Didn’t even put a phone in at his apartment. Told everybody at his workplace not to give out his address.”
Rose poked at his pipe with a penknife. “Is that so?”
“You wondered why little Mike wouldn’t talk to you at the hospital. The reason was—Vaughn had given him strict instructions never to talk to sheriffs, policemen, or George Hetzel. He told Mike these people were not ‘our friends.’”
Closing the penknife with a click, Rose peered at Dave. “George Hetzel too?”
“So Mike said. Why do you suppose that was? Vaughn had been Hetzel’s darling. Then, the night after the housing project burned, he took Jemmie and Mike and ran. With not so much as a goodbye. Did you ever wonder about that?”
Rose tilted his head, frowning. “Date never came to my attention. Remember, I only just moved here to replace Lutz about that time. But if Thomas was scared of Hetzel, don’t it mean Hetzel was after him? And don’t that point the finger right back at Barney Craig? Hetzel wouldn’t go himself to try to find Vaughn.”
“Hetzel was in Columbia, South Carolina,” Dave said. “Delivering a sermon on the text ‘Love thy neighbor.’”
Rose jerked a nod. “So he sent somebody, didn’t he? And Barney was up there in L.A. Sunday morning, and he sure as hell knows how to shoot a rifle.”
“You didn’t learn anything about Vaughn when you questioned Hetzel after the fire? His leaving that way didn’t strike you as significant?”
“Strikes me as significant now you point it out, but Hetzel’s got a lot of young dogs around there, none of ’em house-broke. Vaughn Thomas was just one of the pack, far as I was concerned. I heard stories about him, racing around town in that little red roadster shooting off his gun, stuff like that—but not till later, after I’d settled in here. And he was gone by then, anyway, wasn’t he? Now, when you talk about my questioning Hetzel and his troops about the fire, I rounded ’em up all right, but there was so much milling around and yelling that night—firemen, arson experts, lawyers, TV crews, phones ringing from Washington and Sacramento—I didn’t get a chance to ask ’em much of anything. And the next morning the FBI moved in, and I kept out of their way. That’s how they like it, you know.”
“Hetzel’s office was broken into shortly after the FBI completed their investigation. Did he lodge a complaint?”
Rose nodded glumly. “He was fit to be tied. I wrote out a report and sent it on over to Fortuna, and I don’t know what they did about it. Nothing, I expect. They thought like I did the FBI probably wasn’t satisfied, and sprung a midnight raid to try to catch old George out.”
“That’s what he thinks,” Dave said.
Rose blinked. “And you—what do you think?”
Dave stood up. “I don’t think—I know.” He leaned across and put out his cigarette. “It was somebody else. I can produce the proof. But I’d rather not. Not quite yet.”
“If you’ve got evidence of a crime,” Rose said strictly, “it’s your duty to share it with me. That’s the law.”
“I don’t have it, sheriff. I’ve only seen it.” Dave walked to the open door, stood looking out at the autumn hills and breathing in the sweet morning air. “But if things work out, it will be in your hands tonight.”
“Where you going now?” Rose said.
“To try to work things out,” Dave said, and left.
Someone, probably Ralph Alexander himself, had been digging long, shallow trenches in the front, and laying plastic pipe in them. A pickax and spade lay nearby, along with paper sacks of grass seed. But the house in Horace Thalberg’s abandoned development among the empty hills was deserted. Dave had figured it would be. It was the time of morning when Ralph Alexander was humming up the freeway in his red Sterling, taking his kids to school in Fortuna. Dave parked the Jaguar in the drive and waited.
Half an hour later, Alexander swung his car into the driveway, braked it noisily, so it was still rocking on its springs when he jumped out of it, and slammed its door. He wore white shorts and a purple-and-white striped tank top this morning, and sandals. He looked muscular and angry. He stalked to the driver’s side of the Jaguar and glared with those strange pale eyes of his through the open window.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Didn’t your sister phone you?” Dave said.
“You had no right bothering her,” Alexander said.
“She had no right,” Dave said, “giving you that information from Vaughn Thomas’s juvenile record.” He worked the latch and started to open the door. “Excuse me, please.” Alexander backed off, but still glowering. Dave got out. The sun glared in his eyes. He reached into the car and got the Stetson, put it on, let the car door fall shut. “So that makes us even, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t. Why are you harassing me and my family? I told you, I didn’t kill Vaughn Thomas.”
“You also told me you never heard of him, didn’t know who he was,” Dave said, “yet back there in your workroom is his personnel file, along with those of a dozen other former members of George Hetzel’s outfit. You’d not only heard of Vaughn Thomas, you had his photograph, you knew when he joined up with Hetzel, the home he came from in Los Angeles, and most important of all, the date when he left Hetzel.”
“You broke into this house?” Alexander’s handsome face became a mask of outrage. “You went through my files?”
“As you broke into Hetzel’s, and went through his.”
Alexander scoffed. “Broke into Hetzel’s? That’s ridiculous. Have you ever been there? It’s surrounded by armed guards. How could I break in there?”
“You’ve got more brains than they have,” Dave said. “You figured out a way. You’ve got those papers.”
“For what they’re worth,” Alexander said sourly. “I couldn’t find anything better. I only took those personnel records of defectors hoping one of them was disenchanted, and could tell me something to use against Hetzel.” Alexander laughed ruefully. “Nothing like that. They were just drifters, just moving on in their pickups, with their guns and grenades and paranoia. Thomas was the last in the alphabet. And it took me a long time to make anything of him.”
“Then you noticed he’d left Hetzel’s the night after the fire, you were alerted by the coincidence,” Dave said, “and you began searching for him. Among other places, you phoned Channel Three in Los Angeles to get his address. What did you want with it? What did you want with him, if it wasn’t to kill him?”
“What do you think?” Alexander said. “Because I’m black I’m just naturally a killer, is that it?”
“That isn’t worthy of you,” Dave said. “What I think is that once your sister had confirmed your suspicions that Vaughn Thomas had a pathological fascination with fire, you became convinced he was the underling George Hetzel sent to burn down that housing development, killing your father. You’d been trying to get the FBI, HUD, your senator, anybody in authority to go after Hetzel, and getting nowhere. So you decided to take matters into your own hands.”
“You didn’t find any documents in my files showing Vaughn Thomas set fires as a child.”
“I found the dates when he did it. You wrote those down when your sister told you about them,” Dave said. “I checked them out in the morgue at the Times.” He drew Cecil’s envelope from a pocket, took out the copies of the clippings, laid them in front of Alexander, who squinted at them. “No names are given,” Dave said, “but on those dates you jotted on your Vaughn Thomas page, a young boy set fires, didn’t he? I’m not surprised you don’t have the documents. Your sister wouldn’t have copied them and faxed them to you. If you’d used them to try to indict Thomas, they’d have been too easily traced to her. Barrett Alexander was her father too, after all. That she’d made unauthorized use of those files for personal advan
tage would have put her career in serious jeopardy. Anyway, they were weak stuff to try to build a case from against Vaughn Thomas. They probably wouldn’t even have been admitted as evidence. And she very likely told you so.” Dave eyed him for a moment. “Which shortened your options, right? What was there left to do?”
“Not murder,” Alexander shouted. “I tell you, I didn’t kill him.”
“He was shot with a large-caliber rifle,” Dave said. “Like the one hidden in the crawl space under your roof.”
“I bought that rifle to defend myself,” Alexander protested. “The day after the Klan came calling.”
“I believe you,” Dave said, “and I don’t blame you, but you did take it to Los Angeles last Sunday morning, didn’t you? And not for defense. You had Vaughn Thomas’s address. After you dropped your youngsters at your sister’s, you went on over to Thomas’s, isn’t that so?”
Alexander shook his head. “No.”
Dave went right on. “It wasn’t far. But Vaughn had gone out early, hadn’t he? To play paintball at the Combat Zone. You faked for Jemmie the same story you’d faked on the telephone to the advertising section at Channel Three that you needed to see him about buying commercial time for—what was it?—Status Electronics of Pasadena. It was urgent. A lot of money was involved. And that’s why she told you where he’d gone. And then you went after him.”
“No,” Alexander said. “I tell you, no.”
Dave said, “You had the jungle fatigues in the trunk of your car, along with the rifle, and wearing a helmet with a face mask, you knew, black or white, you couldn’t be identified. You tracked him through the woods until you spotted him. And you shot him down.”
Alexander kept shaking his head.
“And when Jemmie learned what had happened,” Dave said, “she cleared out, afraid you’d come back and kill her too. She took the Greyhound home to Winter Creek—thinking she’d be safely out of your way here. Instead, she stepped directly into your line of fire, didn’t she?”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 16