With a heightened sense of urgency, Savannah hurried into the living room, where the colonel had served them refreshments before. She didn’t have time to dawdle. For all she knew, he had just slipped out to the local market for a quart of milk and was already on his way back.
The last thing she needed right now was to spend time in the county jail for breaking and entering. No . . . . that would make Captain Knothead Bloss far too happy.
Again, she was drawn to the medal, proudly displayed in its case. In all the years of dealing with the public, Savannah had never gotten over the dichotomy of the human spirit. It seemed even the best among us could commit the worst of sins.
Working her way around the room, she pulled out drawers, opened the closet, checked beneath furniture. But nothing seemed out of order.
As she approached the piano, she flashed back on her conversation with Dr. Liu over the body of Earl Mallock.
“Piano wire,” Jennifer had said. “His wrists and ankles were bound with piano wire.”
A buzz against her ribs made her jump. It was the cell phone in her jacket pocket . . . . as though her nerves weren’t tight enough as it was. If she’d been smart, she would have left the damned thing in the car or fed it to Beowulf along with the liver.
She pulled out the phone and flipped it open. “Yeah?” she said irritably.
“Oops, I’m sorry, Savannah. Are you busy?” Tammy said, her Long Island twang more pronounced than usual. She always reverted when under stress.
“A little.”
“Where are you?”
“The colonel’s. And let’s just say . . . . I didn’t receive an engraved invitation to be here . . . . if you know what I mean.”
“You broke in?”
Savannah sighed. “Tammy, this is a cell phone, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry again.”
Tucking the phone beneath her chin, Savannah began to set some of the pictures on top of the piano aside.
“Did you . . . . ah . . . . find anything yet?” Tammy asked.
“Nothing yet.” Carefully, Savannah lifted the shining ebony lid of the baby grand. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Not really. Why?”
“You called me. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I just wanted you to know that Dirk is on his way over here. I told him I thought you’d be back by now. I guess I blew that, too.”
Savannah scanned the row of glistening wires, precision spaced, stretched taut and, no doubt, perfectly tuned. “It’s okay, Tammy. I should be there soon. Just tell him to hang on. Wait a minute. . . .”
One wire was missing.
High up in the treble range, a gap, like that of an absent tooth, grinning at her. Savannah shivered with an awareness she didn’t welcome.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Not exactly what I was hoping for, Colonel.”
“What?” Tammy sounded completely confused.
“Let’s just say I may have found something. I’ve gotta go, and Tammy . . . .”
“Yes?”
“You say you’re sorry all the time. It’s driving me around the bend.”
“It is? Oh, I’m sor—”
“Stop it, or, every time you say it, I’m going to deduct a quarter from the generous salary that I’m not paying you. Understand?”
“Um . . . . I think so.”
“Good. See you soon.”
Savannah shoved the phone back into her pocket and carefully replaced the photographs atop the piano, knowing that a neatnik like Neilson would notice if anything were out of place. She didn’t want anyone, except Tammy and Dirk, to know she had ever been here. Unless she had found something, she hadn’t intended to tell anyone.
Was this something? She wondered. It certainly wasn’t incriminating evidence. There had to be plenty of pianos in the town of San Carmelita with missing wires. But it was definitely something.
At the front window, she glanced outside and saw that the street was still empty. But the creepy feeling was even stronger than before. Like a disease-carrying insect, it crawled up her back and around her neck, making her feel the need to go home and take a long, hot shower with lots of soap.
Murder always made her feel that way.
It wasn’t natural. No matter who committed it or why, it violated the laws of God and man. And her basic instinct was to stay as far away from it as possible.
Not feasible, considering her chosen line of work.
Just as the eerie feeling began to crescendo, the house exploded in a cacophony of bells, chimes, buzzes, and cuckoos. It was 6:00 P.M. on the Pacific coast and in Colonel Forrest Neilson’s house, there was no way to miss the event.
Savannah’s pulse rate tripled and her knees felt like warm gelatin as she sagged against the windowsill and waited for the din to cease.
How could he stand living with this? she wondered, as the sounds went on and on. She and her two companions must have stayed less than fifteen minutes the other day, she decided. They must have just missed witnessing the phenomenon.
The ornately carved grandfather clock to her right was the loudest of all, tolling out the Westminster Chimes with bass notes that reverberated through her body.
She found herself humming the familiar tune, until it stopped, abruptly, in mid-chime.
Strange, she thought. In a house where everything appeared to work perfectly, this was an anomaly.
The clock had an open well, with no glass to shield the chains and etched brass weights. Two of the shining weights were barely visible, hanging in the space above the lower body of the clock. But the third one on the far right had dropped out of sight. The other chains were hanging straight, but the one to the third weight was loose, as though something were lifting it, rather than pulling it down.
More than any of the others in the house, this clock had to be the colonel’s pride and joy. It was obviously older and more valuable than the rest. Savannah couldn’t imagine him neglecting its service or allowing it to be in disrepair.
Kneeling in front of the clock, she lifted the shining brass latch and opened the lower casing.
Once she could see inside, she knew what had halted the downward progression of the weight. It was resting on a small, wooden case.
Instantly, she recognized the type of box, and her hopes for a happy solution to this puzzle fell, even as her investigator’s excitement rose.
It was a gun case.
Carefully setting the box on the carpet, she opened the lid and looked inside.
Nestled in a sculpted bed of aged red velvet, was one of the most beautiful pistols she had ever seen. It was a chrome-plated, .45 caliber, four-inch-long reduced barrel, Colt Commander. A trophy gun, given to an officer by his men.
The engraving on the side confirmed her theory.
“TO CAPT. F.L. NEILSON WITH GRATITUDE AND DEVOTION, FROM THE MEN OF FOXFIRE COMPANY.”
“I knew I should throw it off the end of the pier,” said a deep male voice behind her. Savannah jumped to her feet and whirled around to see the colonel standing in the kitchen door, watching her with a sad, sick look on his face. “I even drove down there at midnight to toss it in . . . . but when it came right down to it, I just couldn’t.”
“I understand,” Savannah said. “I don’t think I could have either. It’s a beautiful piece.”
“It means more to me than that medal over there.” He nodded toward the glass-topped wooden case. “The president who pinned that on me didn’t even know who I was . . . . what I was all about. But the soldiers who gave me that pistol, they knew me better than any human being ever has, including my own wife. They fought with me, side by side. You can’t get closer than that.”
For the first time since Savannah had met him, she thought he looked even older than his seventy years as he walked over to his easy chair and collapsed onto it.
“You might as well have a seat, Miss Reid,” he said, waving a hand toward the sofa. “It appears you and I have a lot to talk about.�
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Savannah glanced down at the pistol. She hadn’t taken it out of its box, and she had no idea if it was loaded or not.
But, loaded or empty she decided that, if she was going to sit on the sofa and have a chat with Colonel Forrest Neilson, it was a good idea to take his gun with her.
“Oh, Dirk. Come on in. I’m glad you’re finally here,” Tammy said as she ushered Dirk across the bougainvillea-covered porch and into the house.
Dirk was surprised, almost shocked. Since when was Tammy Hart happy to see him?
Her face was a bit red; maybe she had gotten too much sun.
“I’m really starting to worry about Savannah,” she said, gripping his arm.
“I’ll tell you right now, that’s a full-time job with no benefits. Believe me, I’ve done it for years. Don’t even get started.”
“I talked to her about forty-five minutes ago on the phone, and she was at Colonel Neilson’s home.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“Snooping, I think. She said she didn’t have an invitation.”
“Yeap, that’s what she calls it, all right. She broke into a colonel’s house . . . . a friend of the chief of police. I swear, I—”
“Dirk, she told me she had found something, but she didn’t say what. And she said she was coming home soon. Where is she?”
“Knowing Savannah, there’s no way to tell. But she’s the only woman I’ve ever known who can wind up in hot water and deep shit at the same time.”
Tammy wrinkled her pert nose and pursed her lips as though she had just sucked on a sour lemon. “Oooo, that’s gross. Must you be so crude, Detective Coulter?”
Dirk chuckled. Other than the fact that they had no idea what sort of trouble Savannah had gotten herself into, or what he would have to do to get her out, things were back to normal.
“Where is your granddaughter, Colonel?” Savannah asked.
“Safe. That’s all I’m going to tell you right now,” he replied.
“Did she see you kill her father?”
“No, of course not. What kind of a man do you take me for? I waited outside until she had left the shack to relieve herself in the woods. That’s when I did it. She never even saw the body.”
The two sat in relative silence for a while, listening to the ticking of the clocks. Savannah watched while he stroked Beowulf’s ear and scratched the animal’s neck as it leaned against his leg. The dog didn’t seem at all aware of the turmoil his master was feeling.
“When I decided to kill Earl,” Neilson continued, “I told myself that I wouldn’t care if I got caught. It was something I had to do, no matter what the cost.
“But now,” he continued, “now that I’ve been exposed, so to speak, I find that it matters very much. Miss Reid, I’m an old man. I don’t want to spend my few remaining years in prison.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before . . . .” Savannah didn’t like the self-righteous tone of her own voice. While she might be morally right, who was she to judge this man?
“Do you think I didn’t? I thought about it long and hard. But like I said, it didn’t seem to matter at the time. He killed my little girl, Miss Reid. She may have been a woman, a stranger to you. But she was my Lisa. That bastard tortured her. Before he died he told me that he was trying to get her to admit that she had committed adultery. But Lisa was a good woman, a decent person. She never . . . . but he . . . .”
His voice broke and tears flooded his eyes. Savannah had the decency to look away.
“I know what he did,” she said. “And I believe I know—at least in part—why you did what you did, too.”
“You can’t know it all . . . . the guilt, the self-condemnation, the regrets. When they wanted to prosecute him, years ago, during the war, it was because they knew what kind of an animal he was. He mistreated his prisoners, just like he did Lisa. But I helped to get him off. I had to, he was my soldier. That’s why I had to be the one to execute him. I had to be the tribunal and the firing squad. He was my responsibility. I had to take care of it the only way I could.”
Savannah had to ask to satisfy her curiosity. “I was wondering, sir, about the piano wire bindings.”
“I wanted to mislead you and the police into thinking it was the same killer. I couldn’t find out what kind of wire he had used on Lisa, but in Vietnam he had used piano on the prisoners. So, I thought it was a good bet. Besides, I thought it was ironic justice somehow for him to be discovered in such a demeaning position, the same as he had inflicted on Lisa and those POWs.”
“But you bound him after he was dead?”
“Of course I did. I’m not a cruel person, Miss Reid. I’m not a monster, like he was.”
Savannah quietly digested that information for a moment, deciding that it had the ring of truth. Then she drew a deep breath and continued. “Colonel, I can’t even imagine the pain you’ve been through, losing your daughter in such a terrible way. And I won’t presume to understand all of your motives and actions. But Earl Mallock wasn’t your soldier anymore. We have laws, and we have peace officers to enforce them. Whatever your reasons, what you did was premeditated murder.”
“You call it what you want. I call it justice.”
“It doesn’t matter what you or I call it. It’s up to the courts now.”
“So, you’re going to arrest me?”
For once, Savannah was almost relieved not to have that badge hanging on its chain around her neck. “I’m not a cop anymore, Colonel,” she replied. “Thankfully, it isn’t my duty to arrest you.”
“But you’re a conscientious, law-abiding citizen, Miss Reid. Just as I was until a few days ago. Do you feel it’s your duty to turn me in?”
She sat, quietly studying him, searching her own heart. The colonel didn’t look like a war hero. He looked like a tired old man with an ashen face and beads of sweat shining on his wrinkled forehead.
But then, one never knew for sure what was going on inside another human being, Savannah reminded herself.
“Are you going to try to stop me?” she asked him. If they were laying their cards on the table, they might as well see the entire deck.
“Do you mean, would I try to kill you, too, rather than let you turn me over to the authorities?” He shook his head. “No, Miss Reid. I’ve killed for my country. I killed for my daughter. But I won’t commit murder or any other crime to keep from suffering the consequences of my own actions. If that’s what you feel you have to do, I won’t try to stop you.”
Savannah looked into those ice blue eyes, and realized they weren’t as cold as she had once thought . . . . as she wished they were.
Under the circumstances, she didn’t want to like, admire, or respect this man. It clouded her judgment, made it difficult to be objective.
Was it her duty to turn him in? Of course it was. He was a killer, plain and simple.
But it wasn’t so plain. And it certainly wasn’t simple.
Either way, Savannah had to make up her mind. Because, from where she sat, she could see out the front window, and a very determined-looking Dirk was coming up the walk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dirk wasn’t overly concerned as he strolled up the sidewalk toward the colonel’s front door. So what if Savannah was a little overdue? What else was new?
It wasn’t until he heard her yelling that he kicked into high gear.
“Dirk! Dirk, Dir-r-r-rk!” She sounded serious. Very serious.
He bolted to the door and tried the knob. Of course, it was locked. Dirk always expected the worst, because that’s what he usually got.
“Dirk!”
She had gone from serious to desperate.
A hundred images flashed across his mind. Most of them having to do with her struggling with a seventy-year-old man. And, judging from the sound of her voice . . . . losing. With her black belt in karate, it didn’t seem likely, but . . . .
He mentally cringed, waiting for the sound of a gunshot.
&nbs
p; “Savannah! Savannah! What the hell’s goin’ on in there?” He tried to force the door, but it was one of those big, solid, reinforced types. And his lineman’s shoulder had seen better days, better years.
“Get in here!” she yelled, sounding breathless. “Back door!”
He sprinted around the side of the house, slipping on some freshly dug dirt in a flower bed. His knee wrenched. Pain shot up to his hip, but he only barely noticed.
He grabbed the back doorknob, twisted and threw it open with so much force that it bounced off the wall and hit him squarely on the forehead.
Even through his own groans of pain, he could hear the dog barking and Savannah panting as she struggled.
“In here!” she cried between strangled gasps.
He ran into the living room, then nearly skidded to a stop, trying to figure out what his eyes were seeing.
The colonel lay sprawled in the middle of the floor on his back. Savannah was kneeling beside him. It looked like she was beating the living crap out of him. There were no weapons in sight, except for a pistol in a fancy box, lying several feet away beside the sofa.
“Don’t just stand there!” she shouted. “Help me!”
“Looks to me like you’ve got everything under control,” he said dryly. “You’re the one on top.”
Now that he could see she was all right, he was relieved and a little pissed for all the effort he had gone through. Besides, his knee was starting to throb.
“Damn it, Dirk. He had a heart attack. Make yourself useful and call an ambulance. Then help me with the CPR, before I have one myself.”
Suddenly, everything made sense, and Dirk felt like a fool.
Oh, well, it wasn’t the first time, he thought as he yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and punched out 911. And knowing him, it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
“Is he going to make it?” Savannah asked the army hospital doctor who looked too young to be anyone’s physician.
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