The Underground Lady

by JC Simmons

  "So, the fact is that the bullet in my mother's head came from VonHorner's gun?"

  "We have to wait for the DNA to be sure it's your mother, but yes, that is a fact, and facts are stubborn things."

  "Facts change, though. They can't do otherwise. If nothing else, they are altered by the sheer fact of their not changing."

  "Of course, and the laws of nature are mathematical, and we proceed through life on the assumption that there is a coherent scheme to the universe yet to be uncovered."

  Sunny Pfeiffer looked strangely at me, but said nothing. I thought, "Please, God, do not let Hebrone's airplane be late."

  We parked in the short-term lot, made our way to the main terminal and checked the monitors that showed arrivals and departures. Southwest Airlines' flight from Dallas was on time.

  We watched the orange and black painted Boeing 737 taxi to the gate. People started spilling out. The forty-nine dollar special one way non-stop flight was packed like a can of sardines. It was only an hour flight, though, and if you were lucky your seatmate was not a four hundred-pound slob or someone who had an aversion to bathing. For some reason, I suddenly thought about people being late. I've never experienced a person being late who didn't have a reason. But there is only one reason they are late. Because their word is no good.

  Hebrone finally emerged from the walkway, accompanied by a young, haggard-looking flight attendant. She was obviously flirting with him. Looking at the man, one would never guess he'd personally killed over one hundred and fifty people. About six feet in height, he had a face that some women, and some men as well, had called handsome. His cheekbones were high like an Indian's and his eyebrows and hair were gray. It was rumored there was Indian blood in his family, but his skin was white and his eyes were pale blue, the color of shallow sea water over white sand, yet lacking sea water's clarity and softness. Spotting us, he waved, said something to the flight attendant, and came to meet us.

  "Good news, I'll tell you in the car."

  After paying a twenty-dollar parking fee for a half-hour of time, we drove onto the interstate and headed toward Union.

  "You smell good," Hebrone said to Sunny.

  "You don't," she replied.

  "Yes, we were packed in pretty tight, and it's been a long day."

  "Gerald VonHorner?" I asked.

  "We got lucky. Usually they destroy those records after ten years, but for some reason they hadn't gotten around to these. He was scheduled for the Denver-Seattle run that week, but he swapped off with another Captain who wanted the next week off. I also found out his then "girlfriend," Kien Phuong, quit her job as a flight attendant that week."

  "We got a match on the bullet found in the skull. VonHorner's .38." I saw Sunny suddenly move in the seat beside me. "I'm sorry."

  "It's okay. I'll get used to it."

  "Then we've got him. What's our next move?"

  "We need to wait on a positive ID on the remains, and then I want to run the newspaper article, see what he does."

  "Why?"

  "I want the S.O.B. to sweat."

  "Yeah," Hebrone said, leaning back in his seat. "Let's make him sweat."

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Waking early, I lay in bed and watched the shadow of a bare limb climb a far wall of my bedroom as the sun rose in the sky. Soon the nights would shorten and the days grow longer. In less than a month the leaves would begin to sprout and turn green. It was a pleasant season, for it promised everything. Life was going on, but I couldn't be sure exactly why.

  After taking a shower, I made coffee, donned a coat, and went out on the porch. It was quiet and peaceful, and I could see my breath. Three hundred yards to the south, not far from the old grass runway where Hadley Welch was killed by a bullet to her brain, four grown coyotes made their way along a tree line. They were barking like dogs, not the usual yelping and howling when on a hunt. Today they seemed to be playing, enjoying the warmer weather, and being coyotes, wild and free. I thought of retrieving my "critter" rifle and shooting them, but I'd had enough of killing.

  Hebrone said I'd not experienced the atrocities men can perpetrate. Compared to him, maybe I hadn't, but I've known some truly evil people. People who, if you wronged them, would kill your children first. Then, when your anguish waned, would kill your wife. Finally when they figured you'd suffered enough, would kill you. I'd call that an atrocity.

  Sipping on the warm coffee, I watched the sun burn off the ground fog, and thought of Gerald VonHorner's motive for murdering Hadley Welch. Killing for money always struck me as a poor reason for murder. But it most always was the motive. It's a better reason than killing for the fun of it. VonHorner's motive was, at least on the surface, a little more complicated than money. True, if exposed, he would have lost substantial amounts of tax-free cash, but more succinctly, the two most important things to him would be taken away – his pilot's license and his mechanic's license. These were his "raison d'etre."

  My phone rang. I got up and went inside to answer it.

  "The DNA is a match. My daughter said to a certainty of one in two hundred and fifty million."

  "Close enough for government work. Thanks, John."

  "We've got motive, opportunity, and ballistics from his gun. I'm ready to move. The District Attorney agrees, though he's worried about the chain of custody on the S & W. He wants to talk to you about how you came into possession of it."

  "Something bothers me about this, John. Give me the forty-eight hours you promised. You can put a tail on the man, if you wish. I want to see what happens when he realizes that we've discovered the airplane and body. It's been twenty-five years, a couple of more days won't matter."

  "Okay, but I can't hold off any more than that."

  "Thanks, John. I'll see that VonHorner gets the first copy of the Union Appeal, hot off the press. Tell the DA that we'll testify to whatever he needs on the .38."

  Dialing Rose's number, Hebrone answered.

  "We've got a DNA match for Hadley Welch. I'll let the Union Appeal know, now. Tell Sunny, but go easy."

  "What's Adams going to do?"

  "He's allowing us the forty-eight hours. We need to hand deliver a copy of the paper to VonHorner."

  "We gonna punish the man?"

  "You bet."

  ***

  "Bill Graham, Jay Leicester. We got a positive DNA match. When can you run the article?"

  "Paper comes out tomorrow. I'll see that it gets front page. You want to see a proof?"

  "No, I'll trust you, but we need copies immediately. How do I get them?"

  "I'll call you as soon as they arrive at our office. You can come by and pick them up or I'll bring them to you."

  "Call me, we'll pick them up and hand deliver a copy to Gerald VonHorner."

  "I want to be there to photograph the arrest. Can you arrange it?"

  "If there is one, yes."

  "You don't plan on – never mind, I don't want to know."

  "Thanks, Bill. I'll await your call."

  Plan on what, I thought? Kill the man ourselves? No, we wouldn't do that, unless it became necessary for self-defense. Punish the man? Iffy, in that the Sheriff and DA and the FAA are aware of the circumstances. Probably be better to let John Quincy Adams handle it.

  Propping my feet up on a cedar post on the porch, I sipped fresh coffee, watching the sun clear the treetops. It was going to be a fine day.

  ***

  "They are here," Bill Graham said. It was eight a.m., Wednesday.

  "We'll see you in twenty minutes."

  At Rose's house, Sunny insisted she ride along with Hebrone and me to deliver the newspaper to Gerald VonHorner. It was useless to argue, and I could see no reason she should not come with us.

  Bill Graham handed me a dozen copies of the Union Appeal.

  "I hope it's what you wanted. The Associated Press has picked up the article. It'll go national tomorrow."

  "Outstanding. Good job, Bill. We'll read it on the way. I owe you one."
<
br />   Hebrone and Sunny read the article while I drove.

  From the backseat, Sunny said, “This is good. That young man is a born journalist. Wonder if he'd consider moving to St. Louis and working as a publicist for Upton Pharmaceuticals?"

  "Leave the man alone, Sunny. We need him, here, to run the newspaper."

  She laughed. "We'll see."

  Parking in front of VonHorner's house, I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty a.m. Taking a copy of the Union Appeal, I went alone to the front door and rang the bell.

  VonHorner himself opened the door. "What do you want?"

  "Thought you might want to see the headlines in the paper." I slapped him in the chest with the newspaper. "Kiss it goodbye, VonHorner." I turned and walked away.

  "Get off my property, and don't come back. I'll have you arrested." He slammed the door.

  I smiled. This was fun.

  "What do we do now?" Sunny asked, when I got back to the truck.

  "We wait."

  "You mean we sit here until he does something?"

  "No, we go back home. Those two Sheriff's Detectives parked up the block will keep an eye on him."

  Sunny turned and looked at the unmarked car with the two men. "I never noticed them."

  Hebrone smiled. "That's what they are striving for."

  ***

  Back at the cottage, I called the sheriff and told him the newspaper was delivered. He said his men had informed him and nothing had moved at the house since we left.

  During lunch at Rose's, my cell phone rang. It was John Quincy Adams.

  "My men say the wife left a few minutes ago, but VonHorner is still at the house."

  "Thanks, John."

  "Listen, Jay, the DA is bugging me again about that gun. He can see no way it would ever be admitted as evidence. Without it, he's got no case."

  "John, Kien VonHorner waved that pistol in my face, Hebrone took it away from her before she killed somebody and kept it in his possession. Tell the DA that this is his problem. Work it out."

  "I'll pass that along. It depends on the Judge, and how he rules. It'll be your word against theirs. Oh well, I'll let you know if VonHorner does anything."

  Hanging up, I looked at Hebrone. "I hate lawyers."

  "The S & W?"

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe we can arrange it so that we don't need any testimony."

  "We can't stoop to their level. That would make us like them."

  "I don't care."

  Looking hard at Hebrone Opshinsky, I knew that he spoke the truth. He did not truly care. Justice is justice.

  At one p.m. my phone rang again.

  "He's on the move, headed north."

  "Thanks. Maybe he's coming to see us?"

  "Be careful. My men will be following, but they will be laying back."

  "Don't worry, John, we can handle things here."

  "I would worry if Opshinsky wasn't with you."

  "Well, he's here. Goodbye, John."

  Shack answered his phone on the first ring.

  "We think VonHorner's on the way here, would you come to Rose's house and stay with her and Sunny? Hebrone and I will be at the cottage."

  "I'm on the way."

  Hebrone and I sat on the porch. It was a beautiful day. The sky was crystal clear, still clean from the fast moving cold front that passed through two days ago. The smell of the cool country air was one of promise. The wind was still, not a breath, unusual for the hill where the cottage sat.

  A Russian assault rifle leaned against a cedar post next to Hebrone's feet, which were propped up on the post. I fingered the magnum in my jacket pocket. We waited. A cow lowed far away, a dog barked. Tension surrounded the porch like syrup. High overhead, vultures soared effortlessly on unseen thermals.

  The black SUV drove slowly and deliberately down the terrace row, past the tree line, and stopped ten yards from where we sat. Gerald VonHorner got out holding what appeared to be an automatic pistol, a Glock, I thought.

  He was a handsome, older guy, though in the unremarkable, unmemorable way of a male model. With the deep acne scars, he would leave a pleasing, but fleeting impression. There was something undistinctive about his jaw, his slender mouth, and aquiline nose. Even his eyes were neutral, a hazel that shaded more to gray than green. His voice, as I remember, went with his appearance. He spoke in the uninflected tones of the chronic depressive or the drug induced.

  He did not move. He did not smile. He just stood there, looking at us. His face had the quiet, earnest look of a man staring at a question.

  Hebrone fingered the trigger on the AK-47. "VonHorner, shoot or don't shoot. But don't argue with yourself."

  He looked down at the gun in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. His facial muscles moved abruptly, then the movement vanished, having conveyed no expression. "I didn't come here to shoot anyone. This was just for protection."

  He looked up, caught my eye, and would not let go of the stare. He held it, looking me straight in the eyes, and I met his gaze and would not turn away. Before long it was as if neither of us were in the same place. He was somewhere else, another scope of woods, another time, and that's where he was seeing me.

  "Put down the gun," Hebrone ordered.

  VonHorner turned, laid the pistol on the front seat of the SUV and closed the door. Walking slowly toward us, he said, “I did not shoot Hadley Welch. I did bury her and the airplane, but it wasn't me that shot her."

  I did not believe that a human body could change dimensions within one's sight, but I saw the man shrinking in weight, in posture, in form, as if the air was escaping from every pore. What once had been arrogance was suddenly a docile person that could not be a threat to anyone. He looked at me with a strange half-smile of serenity, the serenity of a victory over pain.

  We heard the engine before we saw the airplane. It came in low from the south at treetop level. Once it cleared the tree line, it dipped even lower, skimming the tops of the grass like a crop duster. When it approached where we were standing, it pulled straight up, the engine at full power, the propeller screaming. It was a Cessna 182.

  "Oh no," VonHorner said, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. "Oh, my God, no!"

  The airplane climbed until it ran out of airspeed and momentum, then performed a perfect wing-over and screamed straight down toward us. We stood mesmerized, unable to move. At the last possible moment, the plane pulled out of the dive, skimming the treetops, and flying away in a southerly direction. When it was abeam where the grass runway used to be, the Cessna began another vertical climb. At the top of this one, we watched the nose snap over into a spin. I instantly knew that it was too low to recover from that maneuver. After three turns in the spin, it hit with a thump that shook the ground under our feet where we stood. A fireball and black column of smoke rose into the clear winter sky.

  VonHorner sank to his knees. "Kien…"

  The sun touched the treetops on the slope of the hill, and they looked a bluish-silver, catching the color of the sky. The bare limbs went from silver to brown to the smoky blue of the sky above. The light trickled down through the branches and shot upward in sudden spurts when it hit a clump of cedar bows that became a fountain of green rays. It was comforting to watch the motion of light over a stillness where nothing else moved except the black column of smoke to the south.

  Looking at the man on his knees, I felt that I was tied to some wounded stranger who would suddenly scream from his pain. But I felt no pity for the stranger, only a contemptuous impatience. He made us fight him, and it was not an easy fight.

  ***

  It had been a long three days. Law enforcement, the FAA, NTSB, and the media had been crawling all over my once peaceful utopia. Kien VonHorner's body, or what was left of it after the impact and ensuing fire, was removed, and since we already had a hole dug from the removal of Hadley Welch's body and her Piper Super Cub, they just buried the debris from the Cessna in it.

  Determining the cause of the cr
ash was relatively simple, since the Sheriff's deputies following Gerald VonHorner were videotaping him, and they had it all recorded, right down to the moment of impact and beyond.

  The Union Appeal ran follow-up articles on the Hadley Welch murder, and I had just returned from their office thanking Bill Graham for all that he did to help us. Walking into the cottage, I saw Sunny Pfeiffer sitting in a recliner reading a book. We had a meeting planned for later this afternoon.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Oh, Hi. I'm reading one of your books, Intruder in the Dust, by William Faulkner. It's brilliant. It doesn't look like it has ever been read."

  "It's a first edition. My reading copy is in the back. I always buy three copies of important books – one to keep, one to read, and one to loan."

  She laughed, closing the book. "I think his writing is too intelligent for me."

  "I don't believe that, though you do seem more Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, than Faulkner. But Mr. Bill is a hero in this part of the country."

  She pointed out the window. "It's starting to rain."

  "Another cold front is moving through."

  "I hope my plane can get into Philadelphia this afternoon."

  "You're leaving tonight, then?"

  "As soon as we all get together."

  Shack drove up, got out, and ran to the porch, getting soaked.

  "Come on in. There's whiskey on the counter."

  He poured a drink and sat down with us. "Cows will be standing knee deep in mud if this keeps up for long."

  "Is that bad?" Sunny asked.

  Shack laughed. "Only for the cows. Where's Rose and Hebrone?"

  "Due any moment."

  "Them government boys get that hole covered over to suit you?"

  "Did a good job."

  Rose's pickup pulled up. She and Hebrone got out and came inside just as a heavy downpour started.

  Shaking the water off, Hebrone went to the counter and poured a glass half full of whiskey. He stared out the rain-streaked window and took a long drink that shuddered through him. I could tell he was making a long journey while he stood in the kitchen.