Find Her a Grave
Page 30
“Oh, yes. I’m with you.” And, in silent counterpoint, his secret self was kicking in: I’m with you, you pampered, pompous asshole, you puffed-up, slicked-down jerk.
“We know all about Betty Giles,” Haigh said. “We know she and her boyfriend were blackmailing Raymond Dubois. After the boyfriend was killed in Santa Rosa, probably after you fingered him, we know that Betty Giles tried to hide out down in Borrego Springs, in the desert. You followed her. Then, surprise, a professional hit man showed up. He decided to toss a Molotov cocktail in Betty’s window. He’d burn her out, then kill her—that was obviously the plan. Instead, though, his Molotov cocktail exploded as it went through the window, and the hit man—his name was Willis Dodge—got turned into an instant human torch. Are you with me so far?”
“I’m with you.” Bernhardt was satisfied with his own response. His eyes, he could feel, were clear and alert, revealing no fear.
“When the sheriff arrived on the scene, he found you and Betty Giles. He also found a sawed-off shotgun that had been fired. You admitted that the shotgun was yours. You told the sheriff that you fired in self-defense when you saw the Molotov cocktail coming through the window. Correct?”
“It was a reflex. Someone was outside, cutting the screen in the bathroom window. It was dark. When I saw the bottle framed in the window—the wick, flaming—I pulled the trigger automatically. From fifteen feet the shot pattern was probably twelve inches across. I couldn’t miss.”
“How’d you feel, watching Willis Dodge burn to death?” It was a casual question, a matter of academic interest, nothing more.
“I have nightmares.” As again, his inner voice kicked in: Not that it’s any concern of yours, you bloated bureaucrat.
“Hmmm—yes.” It was a perfunctory expression of bogus sympathy followed by a short, speculative silence. This, Bernhardt suspected, was the carefully calculated pause that preceded the final thrust.
“So,” Haigh said, speaking with an air of finality, as if he were about to finish the business between them, “what you’ve got here is a pretty clear choice, Mr. Bernhardt. You can either tell us where to find Betty Giles, in which case you’re off the hook, or else you can elect to stonewall us. If you decide to stonewall, in the belief that you’re protecting Betty Giles, then I have no choice but to contact the United States Attorney. I’ll ask him to prepare two charges against you—one for illegal possession of an outlawed firearm, and one for conspiracy to commit murder. The latter charge would include the murder of Nick Ames and the attempted murder of Betty Giles.”
“You’re joking.”
“Oh, no. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, Mr. Bernhardt. I promise you that you’ll be indicted. Whether or not we have a winnable case, that’s a matter of conjecture. The point is, though, that you’ll go bankrupt long before the trial starts. We took the liberty of running a credit check on you. And it looks like you have a total net worth of about forty thousand dollars. Meaning that, even if the case is thrown out of court, you’ll have long since gone broke.”
“You must want Betty Giles very badly.”
Haigh nodded. “Very.”
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Copyright © 1993 by Collin Wilcox
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