“You don’t believe me?” asked Belva Didrick with a gleam in her eyes.
“I believe you. Did Steve name the man who hired him?”
“No. In fact—” Belva Didrick hesitated.
“In fact what?”
Belva executed an arch little smile. “Nothing, really. Except that Steve was such a terrible flirt . . . I’d rather thought it was to be a mixed party.”
“It was strictly male.”
“Well, I didn’t know . . . I can’t believe Steve is dead. It’s a terrible shock.”
“One more question: did you notice Steve driving a new white Ford?”
“Why, yes,” said the truck-driver’s wife. “That Friday night he was driving a new car. It was white, and I’m pretty sure it was a Ford. My husband was out of town, and Steve was nice enough to drive me home. I asked him about the car, but he just acted mysterious.”
“You didn’t notice the registration, or anything in the car which might have indicated who the owner was?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Didrick. Please don’t talk about this to your friends.”
Belva Didrick rose. Apparently she had altered her first impression of Collins, for she walked away very slowly, with an exaggerated swing of the hips. Once she looked back over her shoulder.
Collins poured beer from his bottle and sat watching the bubbles rise. The Didrick woman’s information had merely cleared away some of the underbrush. Collins heaved a sigh. No help for it: he was going to have to climb the Copper Creek Trail to Persimmon Lake and look for the bottle of whisky.
CHAPTER 14
The morning was clear, almost crisp. A few clouds hung in the west. The vineyards and orchards wore their richest green; to the east the Sierras lofted above the near foothills.
Highway 180 unreeled behind him; the foothills became mountains, the San Joaquin Valley spread below. The first Sequoia redwoods appeared, monsters rearing high above the evergreens. A few miles farther, Collins passed the park entrance.
At the lodge he telephoned Park Superintendent Phelps to request the loan of a horse and camping gear. Phelps suggested that Collins might like the company of a ranger, but Collins declined: he would have more freedom if he worked alone. Phelps instructed him to continue to Cedar Grove, where the necessary equipment would be awaiting him.
At Cedar Grove a ranger was waiting for him. They drove to the stables at the road’s end; one horse was saddled, another loaded with gear. The ranger spoke a few words of advice; Collins changed into suitable garments, mounted his horse, and started up the trail.
He was alone except for the horses. The sun burned hot on granite and sand, drew pungent odors from the fir and pine. The trail rose in switchbacks; the horses ambled along. Collins found himself enjoying the expedition, which from the vantage point of the Clover Club had seemed drudgery.
The morning passed. At Suggs Meadow, where the Genneman party had camped the first night, Collins paused to rest the horses and stretch his legs.
From Suggs Meadow the trail rose once more. The timber grew smaller and more redolent of pitch and resin. The sun passed behind the mountain, the far slope glared bright. Collins rode in shadow tinted with cold blue skylight.
The trail rose above the timberline, passed across barren rock and scree, laced and padded with snow. The scarp reared above, the trail rising to Dutchman Pass at an altitude of 10,390 feet, with snowbanks pressing in. Beyond, the land fell away into a great sky meadow. And there, reflecting the sky, lay Persimmon Lake.
When Collins finally dismounted, it was very nearly six o’clock. He was standing a hundred feet south of Steve Ricks’ camp, and two hundred yards north of the Genneman camp, with a cove of the lake between. There was still an hour of daylight. He unsaddled and unpacked the horses, hobbled them, and gave each a quart of oats in a feedbag. Then he took a folding shovel and set out for the north end of the lake.
The directions, as transmitted by Belva Didrick, were vague. But at the north end of the lake a low outcrop of gray granite humped from the ground. On the side facing the lake, freezing weather had cracked apart the highest section so that it stood like a pointed rock indeed. To the front of it lay an area of coarse sand. Collins stood looking at it, the long low sunlight tracing grotesque shadows across the landscape. He bent and began to dig.
The shovel proved unnecessary; the bottle was barely below the surface. Gingerly Collins brought it forth; there might be other fingerprints than Steve Ricks’ on the glass.
He walked back to his camp, gathered twigs and dead branches, built a fire, heated a can of corned beef hash, fried three eggs, and boiled a pot of coffee.
With twilight came chill. The warmth of the fire was comforting. Collins blew up the air-mattress, unrolled his sleeping bag, then sat with his back to a rock, drinking coffee and staring into the fire. When the murder of Earl Genneman might have been ascribed to a madman, the case was a mess of enigmas, contradictions, blind alleys and paradoxes. No less now. There was no clear-cut motive for the killing of Genneman: he had threatened no one, he was hated by no one, and no one gained by his death. Obviously this absence of motive was illusory; someone had gone to great lengths to kill him, and but for a noise in an automatic transmission the murder would have been blamed upon the faceless man who had followed the Genneman party to Persimmon Lake.
But Steve Ricks had driven his own car through the park entrance, paid his two dollars, and in his innocence identified himself. The error had cost him his life.
Collins looked across the fire at the quart of whisky. There must be a message here, information of some kind. What?
It was ludicrously simple—self-evident, in fact. So obvious that Collins had almost passed it by.
Whoever had instructed Ricks to bury the whisky under the pointed rock must previously have visited Persimmon Lake.
Collins poured out the last of the coffee. Why would anyone conceivably involved have made a previous visit to Persimmon Lake—except to locate the optimum site for ambush?
Collins brooded over the matter while the fire flickered in a breeze. The lake shuddered; the reflection of the afterglow dulled.
The killer had visited Persimmon Lake; he had gone on until he came to Lomax Meadow. Why had he chosen that spot? There was cover in the thick grove of firs and cedar, but along the trail there were dozens of spots where the cover was even denser.
True, at Lomax Meadow the roar of the falls would tend to muffle sounds of flight—but the sound was really not that loud; it was, in fact, hardly more than a murmur. Lomax Meadow seemed far from ideal. The forest here, though dense, was narrow; and it quickly gave way to the mountainside. The murderer would be forced to leave swiftly, unless he counted on caution among the survivors to give him the time he needed . . . A fair enough assumption, Collins decided.
He replenished the fire, and boiled more coffee. The sleeping bag beckoned, but sitting before the fire and watching the twilight fade over the mountains held him fast. His mind wandered at random across the years. Good times and bad, nothing fixed, nothing permanent until the house at Morningside Heights and Lorna.
Had Steve Ricks mused along the same lines as he sat staring into his fire? Probably not, thought Collins. Steve would have been thinking about the two hundred dollars he was earning. He would have been thinking about the Clover Club, maybe working out new tunes in his mind, maybe thinking about Belva Didrick or Molly Wilkerson. One thing was certain—Steve would not have been cogitating the death that was waiting for him three days in the future. Probably when he went to collect his second hundred dollars. Collins grimaced. Poor guitar player. He would have thrown up at what was about to happen to his hands.
Collins jumped to his feet and threw more fuel on the fire. The thought was uncomfortable up here.
Suddenly Collins thought he saw why Lomax Meadow had been the scene of the crime; and if this was so, then there was only one person .. . Collins grinned now, a humorless grin that showed his teeth. What of the pre
vious visit to Persimmon Lake and Lomax Meadow? He tested the question against his suspect and found no disjuncture. Motive? Collins’ grin faded. Why had Earl Genneman been killed?
He got up and began to pace back and forth. First thing, visit Lomax Meadow. He might find what he sought. If he did not, then his theory of the case must remain strictly theory. And the murderer might well escape.
Collins walked down to the lake to wash his face. The fire, with no one sitting beside it, was a lonesome sight. A breath of icy air came down from the snow. Collins shivered and walked back to the fire. For another ten minutes he sat there, then undressed and zipped himself into his sleeping bag.
The night passed. Collins awoke several times to stare up at the stars.
The morning was bright and cold; he lay in the sleeping bag until the sun was fairly up in the sky. At last he dragged himself from the sleeping bag, dressed, built a fire, fixed bacon and eggs, fed the horses grain.
At nine o’clock he broke camp and rode north along the trail. About ten o’clock he saw Lomax Falls ahead and came into Lomax Meadow.
He dismounted and tied the horses to a tree.
The area was as he had recalled it: a pleasant little flat bisected by Lomax Creek, with a strip of forest pressing in upon the trail to the north. Except for the hushed roar of the waterfall, the meadow was quiet.
He walked slowly up the trail and came to the clearing where Earl Genneman had lost his life. The stain still showed dark in the dirt, and Collins’ neck prickled as if a shotgun were aimed at it.
He stood for a moment where Genneman had stood, and looked toward the clump of four cedars from which the gun had been discharged. Then he walked to the clump of cedars, and beyond, to where the mountain fell away to the valley floor.
Collins looked down with distaste. It was a long way to the bottom. He tied a handkerchief to the limb of a bushy fir, then began scrambling down the slope, keeping as nearly as possible directly below the handkerchief.
The mountainside was bare and barren, with coarse sand or loose pebbles occasionally layered over the granite. Rarely a stunted tree had secured a roothold. For the most part the mountain was exposed to the glare of the sun. There might be rattlesnakes among the rocks; it would be unpleasant to be bitten so far from the trail.
Down, down, down—always below the white speck of handkerchief. The descent was hard work; the climb back would be worse.
He came to a little clump of pines growing from bare rock. Below him, to Collins’ dismay, the mountainside became cliff, dropping almost sheer to the valley floor three or four hundred yards below. To get to the valley floor meant a long traverse along the steep mountainside. His theory at this moment seemed bootless . . It was at that moment, looking at the base of the pines, that he noticed what seemed to be a crooked stick about three feet long.
There was the shotgun.
Collins descended the last few feet. He looked cautiously over the verge of the rocks far below. Then he picked up the shotgun.
It trailed three lengths of cord. One, of light strong fishline, was tied to a pair of clothespins. The second was also of fishline, and was tied to the trigger guard. The third cord looped through a hole in the stock, and this was soft-braided nylon—very strong and elastic. This last cord dangled over the edge of the cliff and was about fifty feet long. The end was frayed, broken off.
Collins examined the shotgun, an inexpensive 12-gauge, double-barrel model which might be bought from any mail-order house for fifty dollars. Both barrels had been fired. Collins was not disposed to sneer at the quality of the weapon. It had done its work, and Earl Genneman was as dead as if he had been killed by a two thousand dollar Purdey.
The inspector wrapped the cords around the gun. Now the long climb back. It would be hot, and hard on his legs. The little white speck of handkerchief seemed a long, long way above.
He flung himself down in the meadow beside Lomax Creek and drank, then rolled back in the tar-weed. His legs were numb, his hands scraped; his face was lobster-red from sunburn. Never in his recollection had he felt so tired. But he was far from unhappy. He had the shotgun. He knew how Earl Genneman had been killed, and it had not been by a homicidal maniac—unless all murderers were, by definition, unbalanced.
Collins groaned and sat up. He must mount his horse and return down trail. He consulted his watch. It was already almost one o’clock. He would be riding until long after dark.
Early the following afternoon Collins got back to Fresno headquarters. Captain Bigelow was out to lunch, and Collins went to his own office. There was little of interest in his mail until he came to the last letter in the box. As he read it, his mouth spread wide in a grin. He laid the letter reverently on the table beside the shotgun and the bottle of whisky.
Bigelow looked in through the open door. “You’re back.” He noticed the shotgun on Collins’ desk. “What’s this?”
“I went up for a bottle of whisky, I find the whisky, I find the shotgun. The gun that killed Earl Genneman.”
Bigelow was impressed. “Where’d you find it?”
“Way down the hillside, almost in the valley.” Collins described his adventure. “My legs still wobble, and I ache all the way up the back of my neck from that horse.”
“The main thing is you found the gun,” said Bigelow. “What are all these strings? And clothespins? Somebody hang out a wash?”
“I never thought of that,” said Collins dryly. “Here—look at this.” He gave Bigelow the letter.
Bigelow read and grunted.
“So now we know who killed Genneman, how, and why.”
“But can we prove it? Not too much of this will hold water in court.”
Collins nodded. “Even before I got this letter I had a pretty good idea whom we were looking for. I think I’ve figured out a way to make it stick.”
“How’s that?”
“First, we call the group together for a briefing. That’s what we call it. Actually, we try to goose somebody into acting. If it works, we’re home. If it doesn’t, then we’ve got to figure out something that will.”
“It’s your case,” said Bigelow. “You’ve done wonders, Omar, and I’m going to see that the sheriff knows it.”
Collins looked at the captain in amazement. Bigelow seemed perfectly sincere. “Why, thanks, Captain. Thanks very much,” said Collins. He looked at his watch. “As for that ‘briefing’—what about tonight? Can we mount an operation so soon?”
“The sooner the better, before somebody else gets knocked off.”
“That’s my feeling. There’s one ‘somebody else’ right now whose life is hanging by a thread.”
CHAPTER 15
In the Genneman living room Myron Retwig, Redwall Kershaw, Buck James, Bob Vega, Opal Genneman, Jean Genneman and Earl Genneman, Junior had gathered. For the most part they sat in silence. There was an atmosphere of strain, which Collins encouraged by standing in a corner with Captain Bigelow and whispering.
Finally Collins turned to the group. “This is my superior, Captain Bigelow. He had some business in San Jose, so he thought he’d drop by with me tonight.
“We’ve been investigating, and uncovering a fact or two, and since I know you’re all concerned, I thought you might like to hear a summary of what we’ve been doing.” He looked around with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “This is just a briefing session. I don’t plan to perform any dramatic acts, like suddenly pointing a finger and arresting one of you. I wish I could! This is a very confusing case, and we’re far from out of the woods. And, of course, I’m hoping to turn up a few more items of information, if any occur to you. In fact, before I start, does anyone have anything to tell me?”
Once again he studied the semicircle of faces. Earl Junior sat there smirking. Buck James, close by Jean Genneman, stared back with something like defiance while Jean herself frowned down at her hands. Myron Retwig, in a big overstuffed chair, gazed ruminatively at the ceiling. Red Kershaw looked worried; Bob Vega, wear
ing a gray silk Italian suit, sat tilting his head this way and that. Opal Genneman’s face was expressionless—it was impossible even to guess at her thoughts.
“All of us want to see these murders cleared up, and it might be just some trifle that would turn the trick. For instance, there’s a mysterious white Ford Galaxie hardtop, license LKK-3220, in the picture. Does anyone have knowledge regarding this car?”
Myron Retwig spoke in a voice merely curious. “How does the car enter the case?”
Collins chose his words carefully. There was an extremely fine distinction between saying too little and too much. “I’ll have to go into some background to answer. The police naturally are forced to work methodically. We have to comb the ground for every bit of information. We’re pluggers. Sooner or later we consider every possible angle to a case—maybe a few impossible ones.
“You people have noticed that, when you enter the park, you receive a receipt for your fee on which is noted your license number. We made a list of such numbers and checked every car which entered the park during the week previous to the murder. One of these cars was registered to a Nathan Wingate of Redondo Beach, who denied ever setting foot in the park. Another was registered to Steve Ricks of Fresno. Steve Ricks was killed on the night of Tuesday, June 16, and his body flung into a boxcar. We identified him without too much trouble; we have a few tricks of the trade we don’t talk about too much. Right, Captain?”
“Right,” said Bigelow.
“Naturally we investigated Steve Ricks to a fare-thee-well. We know more about Ricks than his own mother. We found that on Friday, June 12, he drove a white Ford, license LKK-3220. Evidently this particular car is involved in the murder, which is why I asked my question. Is that clear, Mr. Retwig?”
“Quite clear, thank you.”
“We traced Ricks to San Jose and certain of his hangouts, notably a place called Smoky Joe’s Down Home Cabaret, on Latham Avenue. Some of you people may know it. At Smoky Joe’s, Ricks met Mr. Kershaw here, through one of Mr. Kershaw’s ex-wives. Now the story becomes blurred. Apparently Ricks was hired for two hundred dollars—a hundred down, a hundred later—to help play a trick on someone in the camping party. So much Steve confided to a friend. Unfortunately, he did not name the person who hired him to play the trick. In any event we can definitely rule out Ricks as the murderer of Mr. Genneman—even though Ricks was the man who came behind you gentlemen on the trail. This is absolutely definite; we have ironclad proof of it.
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