Schemers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  “This fella a friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  “What you want with him, then?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “You answer my question, I’ll answer yours.”

  Runyon showed his ID, and when the deskman had had his look, “He’s involved in a case I’m investigating.”

  “He do something, break the law or something?”

  “That’s right. And he’s liable to break it again if I don’t find him pretty soon.”

  The desk clerk chewed on that for a time. Shrugged and said, “What the hell, then. Yeah, he stayed here. This past week and one time before that. But he checked out this morning.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “This time? Five days? Let me check.” Quick shuffle through a batch of registration cards. “Five days, right. Left early.”

  “Early?”

  “Asked for a weekly rate when he checked in and I gave it to him.”

  “Mind if I look at that card?”

  Another hesitation, another shrug. “What the hell,” the clerk said again and handed it over.

  In a weak backhand scrawl: T. Devries, Vacaville. No effort to hide his identity. The license plate number matched the one Tamara had supplied and “Dodge van” had been written in the box marked Make of Car. No credit card information: Devries had paid with cash.

  “Any trouble while he was here?” Runyon asked.

  “Not when I was on duty. Hardly even saw him. Seemed like a nice enough kid, said he was in the area on business. But I guess you never know, huh?”

  “What time did he check out?”

  “Little before noon. Twelve’s checkout time.”

  Noon. Missed him by four hours. “Did he say anything? Give you any idea of why he was leaving early, where he was going?”

  “Said he was almost finished with his business. That’s all.”

  Almost finished with his business. Planning something new, and soon. More acid-slinging with a human target this time? He wouldn’t do it in broad daylight, he wasn’t that crazy. When and where? And where was he now?

  Time to talk to Lieutenant St. John. But when Runyon got to the Los Alegres PD, he found that St. John was out on police business and not expected back until five thirty. He left a message, asking the lieutenant to wait if he came in early—the Henderson case, urgent.

  Cliff Henderson wasn’t at the west-side home construction site. Nobody was; work had been shut down for the day. Runyon drove downtown to the Henderson Construction offices in a newish building along the west bank of the Los Alegres River. The offices were open, but Henderson wasn’t there, either. He’d checked in and then left about half an hour ago, the woman at the desk said. Might find him the Oasis Bar; he and some members of his crew often gathered there for a drink or two after work.

  The Oasis had been operating for a lot of years in the same location on the main drag. Somebody’s house once, judging by the architectural style, long ago converted into a tavern and bedecked with neon signs. Old-fashioned inside, too: long bar, cracked leather booths, pool table, jukebox, animal heads mounted on the walls, business cards and dollar bills thumbtacked to the low ceiling. Guy hangout. Runyon got the usual once-over locals give strangers who walk in. The bar stools and booths were all full, but it didn’t take him long to spot Cliff Henderson—crowded into a booth with three other guys, working on pints of draft beer.

  He moved over near the bar, stood there until he caught Henderson’s eye and then gestured to him. Henderson didn’t waste any time joining him. Runyon said, “Talk outside where it’s private,” and led the way through a rear door into a parking lot dominated by pickups and motorcycles.

  Henderson listened with no expression other than a tightening of his facial muscles. When Runyon finished talking he said, “I never heard of anybody named Tucker Devries. Who the hell is he?”

  “Disturbed personality with a perceived grudge against the Henderson family.”

  “What kind of grudge, for Christ’s sake?”

  Irresponsible and unkind to lay the burden of Jenny Noakes’s and his father’s infidelity on Henderson’s shoulders just yet. Runyon said only, “Details are still a little hazy.”

  “But you’re saying it has something to do with my father.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Henderson shook his head, rubbed stubby fingers over the bristles on his jaw. “Five years since he passed away. What set Devries off after all this time?”

  “That’ll come out when he’s in custody.”

  “You’re sure he’s the one?”

  “He fits the profile, he’s got a history of mental problems, and he’s been in the area off and on since the trouble started.”

  “The cops know about this yet?”

  “I’m seeing Lieutenant St. John in a few minutes. But the law demands hard proof and I don’t have a lot of it to offer.”

  “So what, then? They won’t arrest Devries right away?”

  “Maybe not. They’ll have to find him first.”

  “Yeah, that figures. And meanwhile, he’s liable to make another move against Damon or me. You think he’s crazy enough to use acid on one of us?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out, Mr. Henderson.”

  “Miserable son of a bitch …”

  “He drives a fifteen-year-old Dodge Caravan, white, no markings.” Runyon recited the license number. “Pass that information on to your brother and your families. If you spot him anywhere, any time, call the police. Don’t try to play it any other way.”

  “I’m not the hero type,” Henderson said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not about to hide in my house until they catch him, acid or no acid. I can’t live scared. I damn well won’t let him do that to me, either.”

  The talk with St. John went about the way Runyon expected it would. Skepticism, and a faint defensive irritation that a private investigator had managed to turn up information in three days that had eluded his department for three weeks.

  “Listen, Runyon, I knew Lloyd Henderson personally for a lot of years. You’ll never convince me he had anything to do with the murder of some young woman in Mendocino County.”

  “I’m not trying to,” Runyon said. “It’s Devries who believes it.”

  “Because of something of his mother’s that’s been hidden away for twenty years.”

  “Something in that trunk, yes.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Whatever it is, it set him off, pushed him over the edge. Lloyd Henderson’s no longer alive and desecrating his grave wasn’t enough revenge for him.”

  “A goddamn psycho.”

  “The deadly kind. You knew all along that’s what you were dealing with. We both did.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “So what’re you going to do?”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Put out an APB or at least a BOLO. He’s still in the area.”

  “On your say-so? Just like that?” But St. John was chewing on it now, pinch-mouthed, like a dog with a new bone that tasted bad.

  “For the Henderson brothers’ sake, not mine.”

  “You already tell them about Devries?”

  “Cliff Henderson, little while ago. He’s our client—obligation to him as well as to the law. But I didn’t say anything about Jenny Noakes. Not without corroboration.”

  “Well, that’s something, anyway. All right. We’ll look into it.”

  “Hard and fast, Lieutenant.”

  “You don’t have to tell me my job,” St. John said. He slapped his desktop, not too hard, for emphasis. “If you’re right about this Devries character, we’ll find him before he hurts anybody else.”

  One of those meaningless promises cops hand out to victims’ families, the media, other civilians. Runyon didn’t try to push it. Wouldn’t have done any good. The lieutenant was all through listening to him.

  Nothing more for Runyon in Los Alegres. He’d done his job, do
ne his duty. Up to the authorities now. Like it or not, he was out of it.

  22

  I’ve been beating my head against this Cullrane murder all day long,” I said to Kerry that night after dinner, “and all I’ve got for the effort is a headache.”

  “Well, I hate to say it, but that could be because you’re trying to build a case where none exists.”

  “I don’t think so. Angelina Pollexfen could be guilty, sure, and the shooting could’ve happened the way Yin and Davis have it figured, but there’re too many inconsistencies—Pollexfen gathering her and Cullrane together in the library, feeding them drinks that were almost certainly drugged. The three-hour time lapse. The doors apparently being bolted from the inside for no good reason. Plus the kind of man Pollexfen is, plus the blackmail and revenge motives.”

  We were in our mom-and-pop chairs in the living room, a wood fire going, cups of espresso on the table between us. Emily was there, too, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, reading Pride and Prejudice for her school English class. Behind her, Shameless lay draped half on the couch and half on her shoulder in one of his typical cat poses, purring loud enough to override the crackle of the fire. Entire family in after-dinner repose, everybody comfortable except me.

  “There’s a wrongness about the crime scene, too,” I said. “I was in the library only three or four minutes, but I must’ve picked up on something because it didn’t feel right afterward, still doesn’t feel right.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, for one thing, it seemed staged. The more I think about it, the more everything about the case seems staged.”

  “The missing first editions, too, you mean?”

  “Yes. All part of the same plan.”

  “So you’re saying Pollexfen took the books?”

  “More likely him than anybody else.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Start the ball rolling. Set up a motive for his wife to kill her brother.”

  “But the murder method … that’s what doesn’t make sense.”

  “It will if I can figure out the how and the why. How do you arrange a shooting inside a locked room so you have a perfect alibi when it happens? And why use a shotgun, a weapon that makes a hell of a mess? Most of the carnage was confined to the fireplace, but there were blood spatters on some of the book spines. As passionate as Pollexfen is about his collection, why risk the damage?”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize how much of a mess there’d be.”

  “He’s too smart to overlook something like that.”

  “The shotgun was the only weapon in the library?”

  “The only gun in the house. Kept loaded and prominently displayed.”

  “Then it must’ve been a necessary part of whatever the trick was.”

  “Sure. But a big, heavy piece like that … cumbersome, impossible to gimmick.”

  Kerry sipped her espresso. “Is it possible Pollexfen shot Cullrane before he left for the auction? Recorded the sound of the shot, say, and set a timer so it played when it did?”

  “Good theory, but no, that’s not the answer.” I glanced over at Emily and lowered my voice. “The room stank of burned powder and all the blood and gore was fresh. The shot we heard in the hallway is the one that killed Cullrane, no doubt of that.”

  “Well, then, I’m totally baffled. I can’t imagine any other explanation.”

  “Neither can I. But there has to be one. He staged it all, right down to handing me his key so I’d be the one to unlock the two dead holts. And with precision timing.”

  “Are you certain the timing was so precise?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it seems incredible that he could arrange the shooting to the exact moment you and his secretary were in the house with him. How could he know he’d arrive home exactly when he did? He might’ve gotten stuck in traffic driving back from downtown.”

  I rattled that around inside my head. “You’re right,” I said. “The shooting didn’t have to be perfectly timed. For that matter, Pollexfen didn’t have to’ve been in the house at all for the plan to work.”

  “Just luck he was there when it happened?”

  “From his point of view. Cullrane could already have been dead when Brenda Koehler and I came in. All Pollexfen really needed was a couple of witnesses to testify to the fact that the library door was locked. But that still doesn’t help explain how he managed the shooting.”

  “There’s another thing I don’t understand,” Kerry said. “Why would he devise such an elaborate scheme in the first place? I mean, if you’re going to kill one person and frame another, why do it in such a complicated way?”

  “Give himself a perfect alibi.”

  “Still. It seems so … overblown.”

  “Yes, it does. Bothers me, too, but—”

  “Maybe he did it that way because he wanted to fool you, Dad.” Emily, from her cross-legged slouch on the carpet.

  Kerry said, “Emily, you’re supposed to be reading, not eavesdropping on adult conversation.”

  I said, “No, wait a minute. What did you mean, maybe he did it to fool me?”

  “You and the police,” Emily said. “You said he collects mysteries and he’s a big fan. What if he worked out a puzzle he thought nobody could solve, like in Agatha Christie’s books? Only instead of writing it, he actually did it because he thinks he’s smarter than real-life detectives.”

  Well, by God, I thought. My thirteen-year-old logical minded, casually brilliant daughter.

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  I couldn’t sleep. Cullrane’s murder, the elusive wrongness of the crime scene, the gimmick that I couldn’t quite figure out. And Emily’s insight into Pollexfen’s motives, which I should have realized on my own. Cullrane had as much as presented me with the same insight on Tuesday: He’s a schemer, you’re a private eye. If you’re smarter than he is, you’ll figure it out like Mickey Spillane.

  Pollexfen, the mystery buff. Pollexfen, the sly manipulator. Completely in character for him to have devised what he considered a perfect crime and then to set it into motion, not only as revenge against two people he hated but as a match of his wits against those of trained investigators. It would explain the “stolen” first editions, the report to the police, the insurance claim—all part and parcel of a twisted and deadly game. Hell, he’d even thrown out little clues. His request to Barney Rivera that Great Western assign its best investigator to the case. Quoting the Sherlock Holmes dictum to me. A goddamn open challenge.

  Yes, but what about the time element? Cullrane had been blackmailing him for a long time; he’d hated his wife for a long time. Waiting until he figured out the right gimmick? One factor, probably, but there had to be another—a trigger of some kind, the final push across the line between intellectual game and actual murder.

  Something Cullrane had done, maybe an increased demand for money? Possibly. The poor state of Pollexfen’s health? More likely. His age, his heart condition, those increased insurance premiums. Say he’d been told or intuited that he didn’t have long to live. So why not go out in an egocentric blaze of glory, one suited to his intelligence, his passion for crime fiction, the nature of his victims, his penchant for manipulation. End his life basking in the glow of his cleverness and final triumph. Also perfectly in character.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Not if I could help it.

  How to prove his guilt to the police? Everything I had so far was circumstantial or speculative. They wouldn’t listen unless I could offer some proof, or at least a plausible explanation of how the murder was committed.

  What was it about the library, the crime scene, that had struck me as wrong? Concentrate. I visualized the room again, replayed in stop time the few minutes I’d spent in there.

  The shotgun in relation to Cullrane’s body?

  No.

  The position of the body?

  … Yes, but that wasn’t all of it.

>   Angelina Pollexfen’s position?

  No.

  What then? Something else, something else …

  The books.

  The stack on the couch. And the blood-spattered rows next to the fireplace.

  Yes, dammit, the books!

  23

  TUCKER DEVRIES

  He hated bowling alleys.

  Too many people crowded into a confined space on these league nights. And the noise—too much noise. Hard rubber and plastic balls racketing on polyurethane lanes and metal returns. Pins crashing, crashing, crashing. Yells, loud voices, loud laughter. An unending din that set up a pounding in his head until he felt like screaming.

  They were unclean places, too. This one had sticky tabletops, soiled booth cushions and banquette seats, stained carpets. Dirt everywhere. He had to get up and go into the men’s room every few minutes to scrub his hands and face. Not that it did much good. The filth had crept into his pores, making his skin crawl. The only way to completely cleanse himself was to stand under a hot shower, lather his body over and over with rough-textured soap, and it would be many hours before he could do that.

  Tonight, though, the feeling of contamination was more tolerable than on the other Thursday nights he’d come here to Los Alegres Lanes. He felt too good otherwise. Excited, but in that tamped-down, controlled way. Ready for the first execution, with the second soon to come.

  He watched Cliff Henderson step up to the ball return, heft a gaudy, marbled blue ball in his big hands, then hook it powerfully down the lane. Strike. Henderson’s teammates cheered, made raucous comments, slapped his back. Ninth frame of the third game and they were winning this one as they’d won the previous two.

  Now.

  Devries got up from the banquette seat, walked to the bathroom to rewash his hands and face. Straight outside then and around to the north side of the building. He’d parked the van there because it was a semideserted area, not as well lighted as the big lot out front, crowded with thick shadows created by a low bluff that flanked the property on that side.