God, I’d been dense. I had concentrated on the kids. Why? Because they had been right under my nose. Observant, aren’t you, Caitlin, I chastised myself. The stocky, grizzle-haired man who had climbed out of the Buick Tuesday afternoon on Redfern had been right under your nose, too. And you’d even entertained some suspicions about him. Dumb, Caitlin, dumb. Well, I had a little time left. I certainly knew how I’d better use it. I checked my watch. Mid-afternoon. Time enough. I needed to make a quick trip home—I had no intentions of tangling with the muscle-bound Victor unarmed.
And maybe Tonia could shed some light on why Victor was after her. Although I sensed I would have to be gentle with her. Not that she was fragile in the way Val was—not at all. Tonia had guts, all right. It was simple consideration: no one wants to be told they’re a weirdo’s victim. I intended to present her with the facts and let her draw the conclusion for herself. And in the course of doing so, perhaps something bright would occur to her. I hoped so. Because nothing bright was occurring to me.
I maneuvered the MG through traffic, brooding on Victor’s motive. Discounting pure craziness, which just didn’t seem right to me, there seemed to be only three possibilities.
Number one. Victor was doing what he was doing because he was a misogynist—he just had it in for women. But that didn’t fit with what Lester had told me. Farkas hated women because they ruined men. And he hated cheating wives in particular. That should have let Tonia off the hook right there. Therefore, this hypothesis was wrong.
I sighed. Number two. Victor hated lesbians. Tonia was a lesbian, and he was taking his ire out on her. Nope. Again, that didn’t square with Lester’s description of Farkas. He had no specific antipathy for lesbians. So this hypothesis also wouldn’t wash.
Number three. The money. Farkas saw the opportunity to soak these two errant broads for a small fortune. I frowned. Maybe. Money was a powerful motive. Hell, maybe it was the money. That would explain a lot.
But it didn’t explain why Farkas wasn’t pursuing Val with the same singleminded energy as he was Tonia. I pounded the steering wheel in frustration. There was something I wasn’t seeing here, and it was making me a little crazy. I needed help.
To my surprise, Tonia was sitting in the living room reading, her long legs gracefully tucked up under her, a mug of coffee on the table. Well, why not? Everyone deserved a break now and then. I felt envious.
“You’re back soon,” she remarked.
I crossed the living room and paused outside my bedroom door. “Wait right there,” I told her, then quickly went in to get what I needed. My self control in the presence of Tonia Konig was fast fraying. Having her poised in the bedroom door would not have been conducive to professional conduct.
“I’ve been thinking that I owe you an apology,” she said as I returned to the living room.
“Oh?” I said cautiously, taking a chair at what I judged to be a safe distance from her.
“Yes.” She looked at me in embarrassment. “I know you’re doing your best for me. And Val. Directing my anger toward you was completely inappropriate. I’m sorry.”
I smiled. “I’ll consider that an official apology. I accept. Now, how about if I give you someone appropriate to direct your anger at?”
She looked at me in disbelief. “You don’t mean you actually persuaded one of those boys to talk to you?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t even have to beat on him. The kid has such a guilty conscience he was glad to confess.” I frowned. “I only hope he can keep his mouth shut until Saturday.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Do you know someone named Victor Farkas?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.” Then she sat up straight in her chair. “Wait—yes I do! Farkas is Chief of Maintenance at U Vic. Why?”
“He’s the blackmailer,” I told her.
“What? But the boys...they must be working for him!” She trailed off, thinking. “Last Christmas the heating controls in my office had to be repaired,” she told me. “The Chief of Maintenance himself came over to do it. I thought it was a little odd at the time.”
I nodded. “Mmmhmm. And you were out of the office for part of the time when he was there, right?”
“Sure. I had exams to supervise.”
She looked at me, comprehension in her eyes. This lady was quick, all right.
“That bastard must have looked through my appointment book! That’s how he knew I’d be away in February.”
I nodded. “According to the kid I talked to, Victor then made an impression of your house keys, thus sparing the kiddy burglars the trouble of breaking in.”
She shook her head. “And the boys found the letters, gave them to him, and—”
“—and here we are,” I said.
Then I waited. I wanted her to discover for herself that she, not Val, was his target. Dammit, this just had to make sense. She was silent for a few moments, and I grew impatient. I decided to push her a little. “Let’s forget the burglary and concentrate on what happened afterward.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, hasn’t there been a lot of unwelcome attention paid you recently?”
She looked at me, her eyes huge. “Go on.”
I ticked off the points on my fingers. “It was your picture I found in Lester Baines’ files. It was you James Harrington ran down on campus. And it was your window the sniper shot out.”
She began to look a little ill.
“That’s why you insisted I move in here.”
I nodded.
“That’s why you haven’t been so ... concerned about Val.”
“Right.”
“So it isn’t Val and me at all. It’s me this man is after.”
I said nothing.
“God, Caitlin, why? Do you mean he really doesn’t want the money? What does he want, anyhow? To kill me?”
“No, I don’t think so. That bullet was only a .22 and I had a pretty thick jacket on. Also, I stood in one place for a good length of time. He had plenty of time to aim. If he’d wanted to kill me—excuse me, you—he’d have done things differently. No, he just wanted to shoot out your window.” I hoped I was right.
“Then what’s this all about?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Me? Dammit, Caitlin, you’re the investigator!”
I laughed a little bitterly. “Right.”
“I don’t know why he picked me over Val,” Tonia said indignantly. “Not that I’d wish this sort of attention on her, but why me?”
I stood up. Evidently no help was forthcoming here. Ah well.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, a touch of the old belligerence creeping back into her voice. Atta girl, Tonia, I applauded. Get good and mad. It helps hold off the fear.
As for me, I was furious. Why couldn’t I figure this out? “I haven’t been too bright up until now,” I confessed. “I made a big mistake concentrating on the kids. But I intend to redress that error.”
“Oh?” she said a little sarcastically. “How?”
“By concentrating on Farkas. He isn’t a genius, you know,” I told her. “We have that going for us. And most important of all, we have an edge.”
“We do? What edge can we possibly have?”
“He doesn’t know we’re— I’m — coming after him.”
She closed her eyes. Well, I couldn’t say I blamed her. My performance hadn’t been exactly confidence-inspiring so far. She looked at me wearily. “Caitlin, just what—”
“Can I do?” I finished the question for her. “Pay a little visit to our friend Farkas.”
She looked at me in genuine alarm.
I smiled. “Well, to Farkas’ house anyhow.”
“Damn him!” she cried. “Damn all of them!”
I walked around the couch and fetched my .357 from where I had put it in the dining room cabinet. Quickly, out of her range of vision, I threaded the holster thro
ugh my belt loops, buckled it, and took my gun out of its case. Just the sight of its cold, blue steel made me feel better. I checked its ammunition load and replaced the gun in the holster. I walked back around the couch to the front door. “You know,” I told her, “damning on its own isn’t enough. I’m afraid I don’t trust Providence.”
“You wouldn’t,” she said flatly.
“I’m not the trusting type,” I said, shrugging. “Sometimes you just have to help Providence along. Besides,” I told her, “if you do a job yourself, then you know it’s being done properly. Damning is a tricky business. You have to get it just right.”
She said nothing, just sat and looked at me as if I, not Farkas, were responsible for this mess. Evidently our temporary truce was over. I shook my head and let myself out of the house, quietly closing the door behind me.
Chapter Eleven
There was no time for finesse. I just drove up to Farkas’ house, parked, and prayed that he hadn’t taken a sick day. Now that I was back here on Redfern, I could see that the paint was still peeling off 1074. But it was the little house beside it, 1076, that now interested me. It was a tiny, pebble stuccoed place, hardly more than a cottage, but both yard and house were well cared for. No flowers in the beds, no fresh paint, but the grass had been cut, the weeds kept down, and no obvious repairs seemed needed. A neutral, anonymous house. I patted Smith and Wesson once for reassurance, and walked between the houses to the back door.
The lock was nothing special, and in a minute I was in the kitchen. I closed the door cautiously, making sure it didn’t lock behind me, then looked around. I was impressed. Not only was everything neat, it was spotlessly clean. The linoleum was old and scuffed to a faded blue, but it had been freshly scrubbed and waxed. Someone had done some interior decorating recently, and a faint smell of paint lingered in the air. The cupboards, I guessed. They looked shiny and white.
In the living room/dining room was a home gym. There were more weights than I had seen at Nautilus, a bench press, a situp board, some gym mats, and of course, the requisite mirror. I took a look at myself in it and started in surprise—I looked terrible. Pale and drawn, mauve half moons under my eyes. Well, I felt kind of rotten, too. Flexing my shoulder, I grimaced at the Caitlin in the mirror and moved on.
On to the bedroom. It was fanatically neat. The bed had hospital corners, the clothes were carefully aligned in the closet and drawers, and there was no dust anywhere. But the room looked...sterile. There wasn’t a picture, a photo, or a book anywhere. Nothing to suggest that anyone lived here. A trunk in the corner had V.A. FARKAS stencilled on it, and I hesitated, checking my watch. It was getting late.
Come on, Caitlin, I chided myself, bite the bullet. You’ve been dragging your ass ever since you came in here. Just get it over with. Why so squeamish? What did you think you’d find here? I shivered, then got a grip on myself. I could do it if I hurried. I knelt, picked the lock, and opened the trunk. The odor of mothballs assailed me. Inside was a stack of clothes—old Canadian Air Force uniforms. My own father had worn uniforms just like these. There were two charcoal grey wool winter uniforms, some blue cotton shirts, one khaki summer uniform, and a khaki shirt. All clean and neatly folded, but well worn. The arm stripes said that V.A. Farkas had been a sergeant. I rooted around in the trunk and uncovered something else. A pile of body building magazines. Big deal.
I dug a little deeper and found a scrapbook. No, two scrapbooks. I hauled them out and began riffling through the first one. It was full of old Air Force pictures. Planes and people. Groups of men lounging around in their undershirts, posing beside a plane that looked like an old F-86. Still other groups of men standing formally in front of a hangar. I shrugged. Exactly like my father’s old Air Force photos—mementos of his days with various flight crews. The biggest photo was of four men sitting on the wing of a plane, and another, obviously the pilot, sitting in the cockpit giving the thumbs up sign. Was this the pilot Farkas had rescued? No way to tell. He seemed vaguely familiar, though. I shrugged. Maybe he was a war hero. In the same photo, a much younger Farkas sat on the plane’s wing while another crewman held a hand-lettered sign that read BB’s Bomber. The quintet looked healthy, young, and happy. I signed. Nothing incriminating here. I dried my sweaty palms on my jeans, and opened the next book.
And almost at once, the hair on the back of my neck began to rise. Pages and pages of photos of the same man. Not Farkas—the pilot of the plane I had seen in the last book. This was the loving, or obsessive, cataloguing of a life. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. Now I knew the name of the plane’s pilot. I flipped quickly through the scrapbook. The book was filled with photos and newspaper clippings detailing the career of one person, a person who was obviously very special to Farkas, the B.B. of BB’s Bomber. Baxter Carlisle Buchanan.
But just what this all meant was something I’d have to ponder later. Or did it mean anything, I wondered. Perhaps it was just a coincidence—one of Farkas’ victims just happened to be the wife of someone he admired. I really didn’t believe in coincidences like that. They were too unlikely. But what else could it be?
I ran out of the house to my car, my eye on my watch. Not quite four. I had one more haunt of Victor’s to check out this afternoon.
I sat in my MG outside U Vic’s administration building parking lot, keeping my eye on Farkas’ car. I thought the greater part of wisdom might be to cool my heels here until I saw him drive off. I wouldn’t want to pick the lock of his office door only to find him sitting there in the dark like a troll, brooding.
I listened to the radio, read the paper, then went inside to use the ladies’ room. I walked around, bought two roast beef sandwiches and a carton of milk from a machine, and had my lunch just inside the building’s main entrance where I could see the car. I picked up a copy of the undergraduate student newspaper, the faculty newspaper, and the grad student newspaper, and went back to my car to read. Four-fifty. At five-o-three Farkas came out, unlocked his car, and got in. Almost simultaneously, Harrington and Jerome came along and joined him. Farkas drove out of the parking lot.
Just after five is a good time to be around administrative offices. There’s a lot of confusion and hurrying. No one wants to work any unpaid overtime. So the very rushed young secretary I approached was, while buttoning up, only too happy to give me as short an answer as possible..
“Victor Farkas? Who? Oh, you mean Vic. Yeah, sure. His office is in the basement. Right next to the elevator. But he’s probably gone. Listen, I’ve got to run. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”
Right, I thought, and took the stairs. In the basement was a short hall leading to a student lounge with chairs and tables and dispensing machines, and a duplicating center which was just closing. Lining the hall was a bunch of locked doors that said respectively, Men, Women, and V.A. Farkas, Chief of Maintenance. I went on into the student lounge, got a cup of perfectly vile coffee from one of the machines, and sat in a corner where I could see the whole room. Gradually it emptied as students melted away in search of dinner or evening festivities, except for a kid sacked out on a couch, and another one engrossed in a copy of PC Magazine, his back to the door.
The hall was empty, and I had my picks out before I got to Farkas’ door. For the ten seconds it took me to pick his lock, I sweated. And then I was in. I closed the door quietly behind me, heart beating hard, and looked around.
It was a perfectly ordinary looking office, maybe fifteen feet square. One window, covered with wire mesh and set high in the wall, gave me not quite enough light to see. I cursed, because in a few minutes I would have to either turn on his office light or use my flashlight. So I worked as fast as I could.
The top of his desk was no help. Work orders, requests for repairs, invoices, all separated into neat piles. The top middle desk drawer was a jumble of paper clips, pencils, BIC pens, erasers, magic markers, rubber bands, staples, and tape. The right-hand top drawer held blank forms, letterhead, envelopes, plain bond, and a
bout half a dozen 10 x 15-inch brown envelopes.
Plain bond and brown envelopes. A small light went on in my brain. I took out the brown envelopes and examined them. In each of the upper left-hand corners was a small dimple, just like the envelopes that had been sent to Tonia and Val. I took one of the sheets of bond between my fingers and held it up to the light. A watermark. The hair on the back of my neck began to lift a little. I took one of the brown envelopes, stuffed a sheet of bond in it, and put it in my pocket. Comparison shopping.
I resumed my search of the desk. In the bottom right-hand drawer were personnel evaluation reports. Top left drawer held a coffee mug, a spoon, a package of Lipton instant chicken soup, and a small jar of MJB coffee. Terrific.
The bottom left-hand drawer was locked. Excited, I picked it, and when I pulled it open, I was acutely disappointed. Well, what had I really expected anyhow? The letters? A signed confession? There was only a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey. I felt like taking a swig.
I locked the drawer, and looked around the office. It was now very late. In the waning light I saw a filing cabinet shoved against one wall and a bookcase against the other. I checked the bookcase first. No luck. It was filled with such tasty tomes as the city and campus phone books, a five-volume set entitled University Personnel Policy, and some old folded newspapers.
That left the filing cabinet. By now it was too dark to read anything, so I pulled out my penlight. The lock yielded easily, and shielding the light with my cupped hand, I opened the top drawer. It was filled with old work orders and invoices in individual files from 1979 to 1982. The second drawer contained more of the same, only of a more recent vintage. With the third drawer, however, I hit the jackpot.
I couldn’t believe it. I sat on the floor, gingerly opening the 10 x 15 brown envelope that held the letters, and shook them out to make sure. There they were, all six of them. I counted the pages. Twenty-seven, just like the voice on the phone had said. There was nothing else in the drawer.
The Always Anonymous Beast Page 11