Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Bonnar shook his head and walked back to McGuire, checking the corridor to make certain they were alone. “It’s supposed to be kept confidential,” he said quietly. “Two federal officials were here. Gold eagle badges. Secret Service. Very cool dudes. They said he might have been involved in activities related to national security. They talked to him in there.” Bonnar sipped the coffee and nodded at the entrance to the interrogation room. “Spent maybe an hour with him.”

  “Was it taped?”

  Bonnar nodded. “They took it with them. Nobody else was present, and they asked that the interrogation not be indicated on records.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  McGuire stared at Bonnar with such intensity that the other man involuntarily took a small step backwards. “You don’t know?” McGuire asked, his voice rising in outrage. “You let two guys walk in here, talk to a prisoner in private and waltz out leaving nothing but footprints on your goddamn carpet?”

  “It was all above board,” Bonnar shot back. “Their ID and warrant were authentic. And your own APB said he was wanted for the murder of a federal official. These men were heavyweights, McGuire. There’s a bunch of them around here.” He waved an arm in a sweeping arc. “We’ve got the biggest marine base in the world just over the mountains there at Twentynine Palms. We’ve got missile plants down the road near Riverside and a lot of things happen out in the desert near here that I don’t even want to know about. That means a herd of federal people, and if two Secret Service men show up on official business with paperwork authorizing them to talk to my prisoner, then by God they talk to my prisoner. End of story!”

  “Had you met them before?”

  “No.”

  “Did you record their names and badge numbers?”

  “Afraid not.” Bonnar dropped his public relations attitude. “You plan to charge me with official misconduct?”

  McGuire ignored the sarcasm. “No,” he sighed. “But I want to interrogate Crawford where he’ll feel comfortable speaking his mind.”

  “Choose another office. There are a couple of empty ones down the hall. Close the door and you won’t be bothered. Have him all to yourself, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  “I’ll do that,” McGuire snapped.

  Fifteen minutes later they were settled in a sparsely furnished office with the blinds drawn. Bunker Crawford’s large frame was almost folded in an upholstered chair facing the desk. He sat bent from the waist, his feet pulled under the chair, his arms across his chest, his head lowered, the posture of a man suffering pain and defeat. McGuire leaned against the bare teak desk. Innes stood near the door, his face a mask.

  “Feel better in here, Bunker?” McGuire asked.

  Crawford shook his head.

  “Want to tell us what you’re afraid of?”

  Another shake.

  “Will you talk to us at all?”

  This time a nod.

  “But not here.”

  Another nod.

  “Why?”

  Crawford lifted his watery eyes to meet McGuire’s for a moment, then continued upwards to the air vent set in the ceiling.

  Footsteps passed in the outer hall. Snippets of conversation crept under the door and through the walls. McGuire held up his hand in an unnecessary gesture for Crawford and Innes to remain silent and walked quietly to the door, motioning Innes to step aside before quickly swinging it open.

  A uniformed police officer standing an arm’s length from the door glanced up from his clipboard. He had the pink complexion and pale-blue eyes of a man sensitive to sunlight, and he smiled an orthodontically perfect smile at McGuire, who glared back at him. “Hi there,” the officer said, flipping the top sheet on his clipboard and strolling casually away.

  “You really want to take your prisoner out of here?” Bonnar asked. His forehead crinkled in surprise but he was smiling in amusement.

  “Damn right,” McGuire responded.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “The hell it isn’t.”

  Bonnar shook his head in wonder, and returned to his desk. “Your prerogative, Lieutenant,” he said, dropping heavily into his chair. “Although I think it’s a dumb risk. Still, you sign the papers and he’s yours.”

  “We’ll take him back to our motel.”

  “Where’s that?”

  McGuire told him.

  “That’s south on Palm Canyon Drive, about two miles from here.” He sneered at McGuire, folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Not much of a place. Most officers who come down here get themselves booked in the Hyatt. They didn’t exactly break the budget for you, did they?”

  Ten minutes later Crawford was back in his cell and Bonnar was escorting the two Boston detectives through the public foyer to their rented car. They passed two young drifters waiting sullenly in a corner and an overweight Mexican woman nervously talking to a uniformed police officer with a bored expression who made notes in his wire-bound book. At the counter separating the public area from the inner offices, a young well-dressed man was speaking in what sounded like Spanish to a dark-skinned police officer who kept repeating, “Que? Que?”

  “Make a left turn out of the parking lot onto Tahquitz,” Bonnar said when they reached the doorway. “Go down about a mile to Palm Canyon Drive and turn left. Drive about another mile until Palm Canyon makes a sharp left bend and you’ll see your motel straight ahead of you. I’ll have your man ready in an hour. That should give you time to check in, get settled and decide whether you still want him or not. How long will you need him?”

  Bonnar stepped aside to permit the well-dressed young man who had been standing at the counter to leave the police station.

  McGuire said an hour at the most.

  Bonnar pointed his finger at McGuire, jabbing the air as he spoke. “Okay, McGuire,” he warned in a tone that bordered on a threat. “You sign him out and take total responsibility for his well-being. You bring him back here for the night. Then you pick him up again in the morning and you’re out of my hair. Ain’t nobody can say I was sorry to see the backs of you.”

  He leaned against the door frame and watched as McGuire and Innes walked down the palm-lined path to their rented car.

  They drove several blocks into the afternoon sun before Innes spoke. “This is crap,” he said from the passenger seat, staring out the window at the passing landscape.

  “What is?” McGuire pulled the car into the centre lane, ready to turn left onto Palm Canyon Drive, the main business thoroughfare.

  “Taking Crawford out of there. What the hell we need that responsibility for?”

  “Something is scaring the hell out of him,” McGuire answered, his voice tight. “Whatever it is, we won’t get it with Bonnar around. We’ll take him to the motel, maybe give him a beer and see if he loosens up. Then back in the cell overnight and on the plane in the morning. I’ll stay cuffed to him all the time. What’s the worry?”

  “Why not just interrogate him back in Boston?”

  “Because something happened here.” McGuire told Innes about the visit from the two Secret Service men. “If they’re hiding anything from us, I want to deal with it here. Not long distance. And not with Bonnar stonewalling us. Let’s get it settled now.”

  “Crap,” Innes muttered.

  “I don’t like being screwed around with,” McGuire replied. “Never have.”

  Innes turned to him, unimpressed. “Not your case, Joe.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  The motel hadn’t deserved Bonnar’s sneering comment. It was clean and modern, the dark two-storey building, an entire block in length, set well back from the road among thick shrubbery and palm trees. As McGuire wheeled the car into the parking lot, two young children in bathing suits dashed along a pathway clutching towels and plastic toys. Diners were seated at
tables near the motel’s restaurant windows overlooking the landscaped grounds leading to Palm Canyon Drive. Birds chattered among flowering bushes flanking the building. Part of a large national chain, the motel boasted all the amenities for vacationing families, including a large swimming pool, sauna, exercise room and playground.

  A strange place to bring a murderer, McGuire mused. But then, so is any place. He left Innes to register them at the motel office, and walked quickly around the grounds; his eyes alert for danger signals, ambush points, escape routes, anything that represented risk. Everything seemed normal. The walkways were busy and well lit. There was too much shrubbery and it was too thick, but no location was perfectly safe, perfectly secure. He timed the walk from the car to the building. Fifteen seconds, twenty at the most. On an open pathway in full view of the restaurant.

  It would do.

  McGuire and Innes were directed to a large and airy room on the second level with two double beds and a sitting area overlooking the pool. Innes stood at the window gazing down at children and their parents splashing in the water or offering their near-naked bodies to the late afternoon sun, while McGuire inspected the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

  “You want to eat first, or pick him up right away?” McGuire asked when he emerged, a towel at his face.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Innes said.

  McGuire tossed the towel onto the nearest bed. “Ralph,” he began. But when the other man turned to look at him coldly, McGuire waved the thought away. “Never mind,” he said, pulling a set of handcuffs from his bag and striding for the door.

  I’m not after your woman, McGuire had wanted to say. And I’m not trying to run things on my own either. I just want to get the job done the only way I know how. Which, unfortunately, is either with Ollie Schantz, or with nobody.

  The documents were waiting when McGuire and Innes returned to the Palm Springs Police Station. An overweight sergeant inspected the ID provided by McGuire and Innes, watched as they signed a form accepting temporary responsibility for Bunker James Crawford and directed them to drive around to the rear of the building.

  Within minutes, Bunker Crawford emerged between the same two officers who had escorted him to the interrogation room. McGuire ordered the handcuffs removed, then slipped one end of his cuffs over Crawford’s right wrist and the other over his own left wrist.

  “Let’s go have a beer, Bunker,” he said, leading the prisoner towards their rented car. “You drive, Ralph.”

  Emerging at the south end of Palm Canyon Drive, they saw the oversized neon sign of the motel glowing in the early dusk. None of the men spoke during the journey. Crawford sat as far from McGuire as the handcuffs would allow and stared out the window, but he was noticeably less tense, relieved to be leaving the police station. Innes drove slowly, like a taxi driver following a boring and familiar route.

  At the motel, Innes pulled into the parking lot and opened the car door for McGuire and Crawford. The restaurant was now crowded with diners who barely noticed the three men approaching along the flagstone walk, about to step into the orange pool of light spilling from the motel’s neon sign. In the shade of early evening, none of the diners could see the handcuffs linking the quiet detective and his slightly bewildered prisoner.

  The departure of the sun left behind a tropical softness in the dusk air that slowed pulses and perceptions. McGuire recognized it from his months in the Bahamas. There was no need to rush, no need for excess activity. All would unfold in its own time. You learn that in the tropics. McGuire had learned it, and he had almost learned to apply it. The softness of the air was therapeutic and he was thinking of music as he walked stride for stride with his prisoner, Innes a step behind.

  Crawford grunted, the first sound he had made since leaving the police station. The man’s knees collapsed and he seemed to be stumbling, saying something as he fell, almost apologizing.

  The music in McGuire’s head, harmony and melody, became sharp and slashing, music no longer.

  Something flew by McGuire’s ear, catching the light from the neon sign as it passed. A small stone. Children throwing small stones?

  There was a wetness on McGuire’s face. Too late, his instincts, riding the softness of the air and the melody in his mind, began to rouse themselves.

  A woman seated at the restaurant window was watching them casually as McGuire began to fall, forced by Crawford’s weight. Her dinner partner had just made her laugh. Attractive, McGuire noticed. And slim. Like Janet.

  Innes cursed and shouted. Instinct told McGuire to slip his free hand inside his jacket, and for half a heartbeat he searched for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  The second shot struck Innes and he shouted again, one arm flailing the air, the other trying to yank his revolver from its holster.

  Crawford was still falling against McGuire and McGuire’s hand was still inside his jacket, clawing across his chest for a phantom shoulder holster. The prisoner’s weight shoved McGuire off balance and blocked his view of Innes.

  Another shot. McGuire sensed the bullet strike Crawford, felt Crawford’s body jerk against him even as they struck the ground together, chained like links in a bracelet. McGuire squeezed himself against the grass behind Crawford as more bullets struck the prisoner’s body and Innes screamed in pain and fired, again and again, into the dark shrubbery where the sniper had waited. McGuire tried to burrow below the surface of the ground as the fear solidified within him, like plaster setting.

  There were more screams, hysterical sobs and cries of panic. But the shooting ceased. No longer did bullets enter the body of Bunker Crawford, McGuire’s shield of flesh and bone.

  McGuire lifted his head and saw traffic gliding past on Palm Canyon Drive, saw Ralph Innes rolling on the grass in agony, saw the gaping hole in Crawford’s skull where the first bullet had shattered bone and scalp and brains, hurling them into the soft evening air like stones tossed by young children.

  Chapter Five

  The horizon was aflame.

  On the far side the street, the low lines of the Palm Springs Municipal Building began to emerge from darkness. Shrubs and lawns faded from grey to green.

  McGuire watched the dawn arrive, seated on a bench near the manicured walk leading across the lawn to Palm Springs Police Headquarters.

  He had been staring into the darkness for the past hour, refusing to sleep and willing the sun to rise, remembering the chaos at the motel. The hysterical screams of women and children. Ralph Innes squeezing his eyes against the pain and repeating “It hurts. Christ, it hurts.” The arrival of squad cars and ambulances, unfamiliar faces performing familiar, reassuring activities; professional calm washing away chaos.

  Riding with Ralph in the ambulance as it howled its way to the hospital, he had watched as paramedics injected fluids into the wounded police officer and cursed his wounds, their equipment and themselves.

  “It’ll be a few hours before he stabilizes,” the doctors told McGuire at the hospital. “Why not wait outside?” they suggested.

  “Yes,” McGuire replied.

  Instead, he returned to the motel, where the murder site had been secured by uniformed police officers and broad yellow tape. With daylight, the grounds would be scoured for evidence, but nothing could be learned in darkness. Nothing more than what was already known: four 38-calibre bullets struck Bunker Crawford, three more than necessary; another two had entered the body of Ralph Innes, one passing through his abdomen, the other shattering his left forearm.

  McGuire’s instincts had been dulled by disuse and derailed by his anger at Bonnar. Another McGuire, a younger one perhaps, would have recognized that the motel’s setting provided the killer with a choice of several escape routes. Down the path to a car in the parking lot, shielded all the way by shrubbery. Straight ahead to the lighted pool area and into shadows beneath the balconies of the motel. Up the stairs to the open sec
ond-floor walkway, to become just another horrified spectator attracted by the screams and hysteria.

  At the murder site, McGuire gave his statement and eavesdropped on the witness interviews. Finally he hitched a ride in a marked police car returning to Palm Springs Police Headquarters, where he poured himself a coffee and wandered outside to sit alone in the warm desert evening.

  The same questions repeated themselves over and over, riding circular paths through his mind like carved horses on an endless carousel. Had he done the right thing, taking custody of Crawford from the Palm Springs police? Could he have found a way to secure the motel area? What choices did he have, attached to a dying man, unarmed, exposed?

  McGuire pictured himself shielded by Crawford’s still-warm corpse as the restaurant patrons watched. Praying for the shooting to end. And counting the shots. Two into Crawford. One into Ralph. Another into Crawford. Another into Ralph.

  Jesus.

  What else could he have done except cower behind Bunker Crawford’s barrier of flesh?

  What else could he have done but survive?

  Twenty years ago, he told himself, he would have done something. Something foolhardy, perhaps. Something more than surrender to fear and murmur prayers into the dirt.

  Twenty years ago, he had more of life to lose. Yet he would have risked more.

  Twenty years ago, he would have ignored the possibility of being struck by the bullet. Now he knew the likelihood.

  Had he been a coward? He didn’t know. But clearly, he hadn’t been a hero.

  Bonnar arrived with the first light of dawn. The police captain, driving a large grey sedan, began to turn into the parking lot. Then, seeing McGuire on the bench, he wheeled the car to the curb and sauntered across the lawn, scanning the sky as he walked. He wore a pink golf shirt, pale blue slacks and penny loafers with no socks. Aviator-style sunglasses, unnecessary in the weak early light, hid his eyes.

  “He’ll make it,” Bonnar said, resting a foot on the end of the bench. “Hospital just called me. Out of surgery, pretty doped up and his spleen shot to hell. But they figure he’ll come through.” He squinted into the half-circle of the sun visible over the low municipal building across the street. “Where the hell were you? Why weren’t you there waiting for news about him?”