by Stuart Woods
“Because I have a feeling the Santa Fe police are on to you.”
“You mean on to you, don’t you?”
“It’s the same thing, Jack. If one of us goes down, we all go down. You see that, don’t you?”
“Don, I think if we just hang tight, everything will be fine.”
“If it gets to be fine, I’ll let you know,” Wells said. “Then you can come back. But in the meantime, we have problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“I’ll take care of Tina and Soledad, send them away for a while, but then there’s Grif Edwards.”
“You don’t have to worry about Grif, Don. I mean, he’s not the smartest guy in the world, but he’ll stand up.”
“Let me describe a situation, Jack, and you tell me what you think about it. You’re Grif Edwards, and you get arrested. The cops tell you they’ve got evidence that puts you in my house in Santa Fe at the time of the murders; they tell you that they’ll go easy on you if you’ll implicate others, maybe even tell you you’ll walk if you turn state’s evidence. You’re Grif Edwards; what would you do?”
“Okay, I get the point. What would make you feel more comfortable, Don?”
“Get Edwards to meet you in Mexico; see that he doesn’t come back.”
“You know, Don, if I stay at Centurion, I can retire with a pension in a few years.”
“Here’s what I’ll do, Jack: Right now, I can’t probate my wife’s will, because I’m still a suspect. But with the four of you unavailable to the police, I’ll be cleared in a few weeks or months. Once that happens, and her estate is settled, every year, the first week in January, I’ll send you twenty-five grand in cash. That’s a lot of money in Mexico, Jack, and it’s as much as you’d get from a pension. A buck goes a long way down there.”
“How long will you send the money?”
“For as long as we both shall live,” Wells said. “If I die, you’ll have to go to work. If you die, well, you won’t need the money. Fair enough?”
“Well …”
“Let me mention one other thing, Jack: If you stay in L.A., or anywhere else the cops can find and extradite you, you’re looking at life with no parole, at a minimum. And in New Mexico, they still have the death penalty.”
Cato sighed. “Okay, Don. When I finish this picture, I’ll go.”
“You finish the picture tomorrow, Jack. I want you to go home now, pack up your stuff and load your truck. Throw away what you can’t take with you. Tell the neighbors you’ve got a job back east, or you inherited some money. Write your landlord a letter; pay him anything you owe him. Tomorrow, when the picture wraps, don’t go back to your house. Give the employment office your resignation, leave the studio and don’t be seen in this country again. We’ve both got untraceable cell phones. If you have to communicate with me, do it that way. Don’t leave any messages. If I don’t answer, try me later, late at night.”
“That’s pretty final, Don.”
“It can get a lot more final, Jack.” Wells shook his hand, went back to his car and drove home to Malibu. He hoped to God that Cato had taken him seriously, because if he hadn’t, Cato was going to have to go, and Don Wells was going to have to see to it himself.
JACK CATO SAT at his desk and thought it through. He called the motor pool, and Grif Edwards answered.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“How you doin’?”
“Pretty good. I hear we’ve been cleared on that thing.”
“Yeah? That’s great news. How do you know?”
“Let’s don’t talk about it on the phone. Are you working late?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a ring job on a ’38 Ford, and I need to finish it tonight. I should be done by ten, ten thirty.”
“When you finish, come over to the stable. I’ll tell you what’s going on. There’s going to be more money, too.”
“See you around ten.”
Jack got his pry bar and went out to the privy behind the barn. He got the floor up, brushed back the dirt and opened the safe. He removed all the money and put it into a small, plastic trash bag, then locked the safe, rearranged the dirt and hammered down the floorboards.
He returned to the stable and went through his desk drawers to see if there was anything he wanted to keep. He stuffed a few things into the trash bag, then he typed out a letter of resignation, saying he had gotten a better job offer and was leaving Centurion immediately.
He got into his truck and left by the main gate, taking particular care that the guard recognized him. He drove around the studio property to the back-lot gate and let himself in with his key, then returned and parked the truck in the stable, out of sight.
He put on a pair of thin driving gloves and typed two letters. He put one into an envelope but didn’t seal it, then put it into his inside coat pocket. He put the other letter, the money from the privy and the small tape recorder in a lockbox welded to the underside of his truck, then he wiped the typewriter clean of any of his old fingerprints that might remain.
Around ten o’clock, Grif Edwards showed up. “Hey, Jack,” he said.
“C’mere a second and try out this typewriter.” He handed Grif a sheet of paper.
Grif put the paper into the machine and typed, Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s okay.”
“You want it? I’ll give it to you.”
“Thanks. I guess I can use it.” Edwards picked up the typewriter and put it into his car, then came back. “Why are you getting rid of it?”
“Because I’m moving to Mexico. You want to go with me?”
“Why are you moving down there?”
“Because Don Wells told me if I don’t, I’m going to end up in prison.”
“Holy shit! I thought you said we were in the clear.”
“I thought we were, until Don came by here after I called you and told me the cops were on to me. That means you, too.”
“Jesus, Jack, I thought our alibis were airtight.”
“Something broke along the way. I don’t know what.”
“So you’re going to Mexico?”
“Tomorrow after work. I’m gonna go home tonight and load up my truck. You want to go?”
Edwards shook his head. “I don’t know, Jack.”
“Well, you let me know tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to give you a present.”
“What’s that?”
“Come on, I’ll show you. You’re gonna like it.”
The two men got into Edwards’s car and drove over to the armory. Cato let them in and led Edwards to the little office, where he opened the steel gun cabinet. He picked up a Colt Officer’s .45, shoved a clip into it and racked the slide. He picked up a soft cloth on the desk, wiped the gun down, picked it up with the cloth and handed it to Edwards. “Remember this? You always liked it.”
“Oh, yeah, I used it in that cop thing we did, remember?”
“It’s yours, now. They’ll never have any idea where it went.”
Edwards hefted the gun in his hand and aimed it.
“Let me show you something about this weapon,” Cato said, taking it from him. Quickly, he held the gun, wrapped in the cloth, an inch from Edwards’s temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and brains sprayed on the wall behind him, and the force knocked him to the floor.
Cato picked up Edwards’s right hand and put some more of his prints on the weapon, and on the letter and envelope from his pocket, then he put the armory key into Edwards’s pocket. Still wearing his driving gloves, Cato took the typewriter from the backseat of Edwards’s car, then walked back to the stable, showered again and rolled his clothes into a tight wad. He put on clean clothes, collected the remaining stationery and envelopes in his desk drawer, then got into his truck and drove to the back-lot gate and let himself out, chaining it shut again.
He drove to Edwards’s house, found the key under the flowerpot and let himself in. He put the stationery into a drawer in Edwards’s desk
, then set the typewriter on the desktop. He removed the envelope from his pocket and leaned it against the telephone on the desk.
He let himself out, then, on the way home, he ditched his blood-spattered clothes in a street trash basket.
47
ALEX REESE WAS sitting at his desk the following morning when the phone rang. “Alex Reese.”
“Detective Reese? This is Dr. Anthony DeMarco in Los Angeles, returning your call. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I’ve had a busy week.”
“Thank you for calling, Dr. DeMarco. Do you own a Beech Bonanza?” He gave him the registration number.
“Yes, I do.”
“Have you recently flown your airplane to Santa Fe?”
“No, I haven’t, but I lease the airplane to the Compton Flying Club at Compton Airport, and one of their members may have rented it and flown it there. I’ll give you their number.”
Reese wrote down the number. “Thank you very much, Dr. DeMarco,” he said, then hung up and phoned the club.
“Compton Flying Club. This is Margie,” a woman’s voice said.
“Good morning. My name is Detective Alex Reese, from the Santa Fe, New Mexico, Police Department.”
“What can I do for you?”
Reese gave her the relevant dates. “Did you rent Dr. Anthony DeMarco’s Beech Bonanza to a member that weekend?”
“Hang on, let me check the log.” She came back. “Yes, we rented it to a member named Jack Cato.”
Reese’s heart leapt, then he had another thought. He gave her some earlier dates.
“Yes, we rented the Bonanza to Mr. Cato then, too.”
“Were you there when Mr. Cato took off?”
“Not the second time; he asked me to fuel the airplane and leave the key under the nose wheel. But the first weekend I was there when they left.”
“Someone was with him?”
“Yes, another man.”
“Do you know the other man’s name?”
“Jack called him Grif. I don’t know his last name.”
“Would you be kind enough to write me a letter to that effect?” Reese gave her his address, then hung up. He went immediately to the D.A.’s office.
Bob Martínez waved Reese to a chair. “What’s up?”
“You’re not going to believe this: Jack Cato and Grif Edwards killed Donna Wells and her son, and Cato fired the shot that struck Susannah Wilde.”
“They did both?”
“Well, I think Cato worked alone on the Wilde thing, but Edwards was with him for the Wells murders. I have a witness that saw them take off together in the Bonanza from Compton Airport, in L.A. I don’t have a witness yet who saw them in Santa Fe, but I’ve got one at the airport who puts Cato in the Bonanza the second time. She made him from a movie he was in, one of Don Wells’s pictures.”
“This is fantastic work, Alex, but I don’t get the Susannah Wilde thing. What connection does Wells have with her?”
“Well, they’re both in the movie business; maybe they know each other that way. That’s going to take some more investigating.”
“Oh, another thing,” Martínez said. “There’s a break in the murder case of Donna’s first husband. Wells’s alibi for that occasion now has a crack in it.”
“Wonderful! Will you get me a murder warrant for Jack Cato and Grif Edwards? I’ll get the LAPD to pick them up, and then we’ll extradite them.”
“I’ll not only get that warrant; I’ll get you extradition papers, too. I want you to go back to L.A. and be in on the arrest; it’ll look good in the papers.”
“What about Don Wells? Shouldn’t I pick him up, too?”
“We’ve got a problem there,” Martínez said. “We can connect Wells to Cato and Edwards, but we don’t yet have any evidence that he hired them to kill his wife and son. We’re going to have to break Cato or Edwards—or both—to get that.”
“There are also the two girls who gave Cato and Edwards their alibi. I’ve learned that one of them is sleeping with Wells, and has been for some time.”
That will sound good at trial, but we don’t have enough to arrest the girls yet. Maybe Cato and Edwards will give them up, too.”
“I’ll question them again after we’ve arrested Cato and Edwards. The problem is, when Wells hears about it, he might run. God knows, he has the money.”
“Yeah, that could be a problem. I’ll request LAPD surveillance on him.” Martínez looked at his watch. “Can you make the eleven o’clock plane from Albuquerque?”
“No, I have to stop at home and pick up some things. I’ll make the three o’clock plane, though.”
“I’ll have the warrants and extradition papers for you in an hour,” Martínez said. “I’ll get the LAPD to get search warrants for their homes and places of work, too.”
REESE LEFT, and Martínez dictated the warrant and extradition details to his secretary, called a judge and sent his secretary to him for his signature. He called the L.A. Chief of Police and requested surveillance on Don Wells, then he called the LAPD office for search warrants. Then he made another call.
“Ed Eagle.”
“Ed, it’s Bob Martínez.”
“Morning, Bob.”
“I have some news. Call it disclosure.”
“Yes.”
“You recall the two stuntmen who worked for Don Wells, the ones we questioned in L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“We can put them in Santa Fe at the time of the murders of Donna Wells and her son.”
“Lots of people come to Santa Fe for a weekend, Bob, especially from L.A.”
“There’s more, Ed.”
“What more?”
“We can put one of them, Jack Cato, in Santa Fe at the time of the shooting of Susannah Wilde.”
There followed a stunned silence.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Bob. Wells has no motive to kill Susannah; they don’t even know each other. No, it was Barbara who sent the shooter to Susannah’s house.”
“Well, it’s looking like the same shooter as the one who committed the Wells killings.”
“Then we’ve got two different people hiring the same hit man.”
“Happens all the time, Ed. The pros will work for anybody.”
“Are you arresting Cato and Edwards?”
“Yes, the warrants are being issued now. Alex Reese is flying to L.A. this afternoon to serve them and make the arrests.”
“What about my client? Are you arresting him?”
“No, we have insufficient evidence for that. On the other hand, if he tries to run, we’ll bring him in. You might convey that to him, Ed.”
“I’ll pass on the message. Thanks for calling.”
48
JACK CATO STAYED up late packing most of his belongings and stuffing others into trash bags. He unloaded the trash bags into a Dumpster at a construction site a few blocks away, then he went home and loaded everything else into his truck.
He got a couple of hours sleep and was on the set at Centurion at seven A.M. Don Wells walked past him, stopped and consulted a clipboard. “I’m going to shoot your stuff first, Jack; you’ll be out of here by noon. Are you ready to move?”
“Yep, everything’s in my truck.”
THEY HAD BEEN working for a little over an hour when the director called for a change of setup. “Where are my guns?” he yelled at an assistant director.
“They’re late,” he said. “I’ll call the armory.” The young man pressed a button on his cell phone, talked, listened, then came back to the director, who was talking with Don Wells. “You know that stunt guy, Grif Edwards?”
Both men nodded.
“Well, he’s dead. Shot himself over at the armory. That’s why the guns aren’t here; the cops are crawling all over the place.”
“We can’t shoot this scene without guns,” the director said.
“Come on,” Wells replied, “let’s go over there and see what we can do.” The two men got into a golf cart and
drove over to the armory.
There was yellow tape over the door, and as they looked in, a detective approached them. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“We heard there was a shooting over here,” the director said. “We’re shooting the final scenes of a film, and we need our guns.”
“Do you gentlemen know a man named Griffin Edwards?”
“Sure,” the director said, “he’s worked on our films as a stuntman. Did he kill himself?”
“Do you know any reason why he would?”
“Not me,” the director said.
“Me, either,” Wells chimed in. “Is the guy who runs the armory here?”
“Yeah, just a minute.”
They waited until the armory manager came outside. “You heard?”
“Yes,” the director said, “and we’re sorry, but we need half a dozen Winchesters and six-guns. I ordered this stuff last week.”
Another detective came outside and introduced himself as the officer in charge of the investigation. The manager explained the situation.
“Well,” the detective said, “Edwards didn’t use a Winchester or a six-gun, so I guess you can give them to these people.”
“We’ll have them back this afternoon,” Wells said. They loaded the guns and blank ammunition into the golf cart and returned to the set.
Wells waved Cato over. “Seems Grif Edwards has shot himself over at the armory.”
“Jesus!” Cato said. “Why would he do that?”
“Who knows?” Wells said. “Let’s get back to work.”
ED EAGLE AND Susannah Wilde took off from Santa Fe and headed for Los Angeles. They were halfway there before Eagle put it all together in his mind. “I’ve got it,” he said.
“Got what?”
“Wells had nothing to do with the attempt on your life; that was Barbara, as we’ve always thought. But she used the same hit man that Wells used.”
“How would Barbara and Wells be using the same hit man?”
“The connection is the movie business. Barbara’s pal, Jimmy Long, is a producer, too, and he works out of Centurion. I’d be willing to bet that Jack Cato worked in at least one of his pictures.”
“That makes sense as a connection, I guess. What are you going to do about all this?”
“First, I’m going to talk to two P.I.s who work for me sometime, then I’m going to talk to Don Wells, then I’m going to talk to the chief of police.”