Sinister Justice

by Steve Pickens

  “Marion Burd? Who probably weighs ninety-eight pounds after a dunk in the bay?” asked Jake, incredulous.

  “Never underestimate the resourcefulness of intelligent people. Or stupid people, come to that.”

  “Yeah, but that wolfhound had to have weighed more than she did.”

  “Have you seen said wolfhound?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Drugged, it would be dead weight but not impossible for someone like Marion to move. Besides, it was probably trained.”

  Jake tried to picture petite, immaculately dressed Marion Burd dragging an unconscious wolfhound into a cage and then lifting the cage up. “I just don’t buy that, Sam,” said Jake. “That house is right on the road. Don’t you think someone would have notice Marion Burd prancing around with a gigantic dog yelling, ‘Kill! Kill!’ at the top of her lungs?”

  “You’re letting your prejudices get in the way, Jake. Think of how the murders have worked. They took patience, skill and a lot of planning. These weren’t spur-of-the-moment crimes. Given enough time and anger, you’d be surprised at what someone can do,” said Sam sadly. “Although when it comes to Marion Burd, I happen to agree with you.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “As for the others…”

  “Oh, don’t start,” said Jake, snapping his fingers. “Emma Kennedy.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s gone in on the Chinook. Maybe Alex is too distracted, but Emma would want a return on her investment.”

  Sam nodded, scratching his beard in deep thought. “Randy Burrows could certainly wrangle a wolfhound.”

  “So the two of them get together to bump off Leona and Reed, thereby eliminating any threat to Wilde Park, and thusly, their investment,” said Jake. “There’s only one problem with that though. Baldo found out that the land was in trust already.”

  “Yeah, but not until just before the second town meeting. Remember, Reed was already moving ahead. By the time they found out, it might have been too late to stop.”

  “Or they didn’t want to. In any event, they wouldn’t have to bump off Verna Monger because she’d already be so terrified with two of her friends having been murdered, she’d probably vote however the other council members did. And she did, come to that.”

  Sam tapped the map with his index finger. “Gladys Nyberg lives around there too, but I can’t see her as a killer. She’s really got no stake in any of it, didn’t associate with the other two, and she’s always been more direct, like smacking people with her umbrella.”

  “Agreed. Looking for the crazy person to be the murderer is a cop out. Besides, Gladys isn’t known for her subtlety.”

  “Who else could have wanted them both dead? Reed had no shortage of enemies, but I’m not familiar with Leona Weinberg enough to really come up with another idea.”

  “Say, what’s gotten into you?” asked Jake suspiciously.

  “What?”

  “What happened to that reading me the riot act over not getting involved with nasty little homicides?”

  “Oh, that,” said Sam, blushing. “Well, dear Leona was our neighbor. I suppose we owe it to her.”

  “Dear you-dirty-perverts Leona? What did you put in that iced tea you’re drinking, anyway?”

  “Never you mind,” said Sam, moving his drink away from Jake.

  Jake snagged the tea away from Sam and took a big sip. He looked at Sam and raised his eyebrows. “Ah ha! Just as I thought. Nothing.”

  “You know I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “I know it,” said Jake, looking out the window at the now bare bigleaf maples in front of the Crenshaw house. “What about the neighbors?”

  “Other than us, I assume.”

  “I didn’t murder either one of them, did you?”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you something, Jake.”

  “Don’t even,” said Jake, rising to look out the window again. “You’re about as violent as your average potted palm.”

  “Ever seen a triffid?” Sam asked, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Those are fictional plants, Samuel.”

  “Well, on a more serious note, Reed did tend to bring the worst out in a person. I thought Detective Haggerty had cleared all the neighbors?”

  “Mr. Origami said so, but what do you think?” Jake motioned for him to rise and join him at the window.

  “What do I think?” He looked across the street at the Crenshaw house. “I think Al and Phyllis are about the least likely pair of murderers on the block.”

  “I would agree with that.”

  “Now the Jacoby family at number 96…” said Sam. “You know them. Couple in their sixties. Mrs. Jacoby plays organ for St. Stephen’s.”

  “Knock it off, Sam. Churchgoers regularly commit murders. It’s been documented.”

  “I know, I know. What I meant was, Mr. Jacoby is a retired insurance salesman. Do you think either of them have a creative bone in their body to come up with such a bizarre way of killing people off?”

  “Ha, no.”

  “The Millers across from Leona had no cause to interact with her. They’re never home.”

  “Well, damn. I guess Haggerty was right.”

  “What about Reed’s neighbors?” asked Sam.

  “I doubt they even knew he was there. That big old house out on Sky Heights is so far off the road and so far from anyone on either side I can’t see his neighbors being in too much of a state over anything. On the other hand, there are always property disputes, borders, throughways, that kind of thing. I suppose Haggerty’s looked into all that.”

  “One can hope, anyway.”

  “I wonder if the notes were genuine, or just meant to throw the police off,” said Jake, lost in thought.

  “How so?”

  “Enemies of Arrow Bay…I mean, if you think outside Wilde Park, that throws open the door to a whole lot more people, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does,” he said, and without realizing it, moved closer to Jake. They sat down together on the couch, both cogitating the unpleasant prospects of what might lie ahead.

  “Uh, you know,” said Jake slowly. “I told Haggerty he ought to check on Blackburn Junior.”

  “The money behind Longhoffer. Surely Haggerty thought of that?”

  “I’m sure they both had, but their attention, like ours was tuned on the next likely victim, Verna Monger.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard any sirens, and Jason hasn’t come burst into the place, so my guess is, nasty old Alexander Blackburn Junior is probably just fine.”

  * * *

  “Junior?” called Vivian Blackburn as she came into the large house on Dormer Window Road. She had been shopping all afternoon, and her arms were loaded with packages. When her husband didn’t reply, she set the packages down on the living room sofa.

  “Junior? Lord, why have you got the heat on so high?” she asked, examining the thermostat, which was turned up as high as it would go. The furnace continued blowing unabated until she knocked the temperature down. The smell hit her—something was burning.

  “Alexander?” She ran upstairs and went through the upper rooms. They were empty, but the pervading smell of something burning wafted through the house. She went back downstairs, hastily checking her husband’s den, her sewing room, and the guest room.

  At last, she walked into the kitchen, where the burning smell was overwhelming. Vivian Blackburn stopped in the center of the room. The oven was sending up puffs of intermittent smoke. She walked over and snapped it off.

  “Lord, Alex, what have you been cooking now?” she said, having been subject to many of her husband’s culinary disasters. She threw open the oven door, waiting for the smoke to clear so she could see what unfortunate thing her husband had roasted.

  She screamed loud enough for the neighbors to come running. When Deedee Dumont got into the house, she found Vivian Blackburn on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, still screaming and shaking violently. She finally h
ad to slap the woman to knock her out of hysterics.

  “Vivian, what is it? What is it?”

  Vivian merely pointed.

  Deedee Dumont rose slowly, noticing for the first time the horribly charred smell roiling through the kitchen. She followed the direction her friend was pointing, finally seeing the charred, hulking mass in the oven. When she finally realized what it was, she ran over to the sink and vomited, emptying everything in her stomach.

  Alexander Blackburn Junior had been roasted in his own oven.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The nature of Alexander Blackburn Junior’s passing did not appear in the papers. Adam Haggerty was doing his level best to keep the latest Concerned Citizen murder from being reported. He was afraid the case was slipping out of his control. The chief was calling for the FBI to be brought in, but Haggerty had pleaded his case and asked for a little more time, sure that he and Trumbo would be able to crack it.

  Blackburn’s death had been reported. His obituary was printed dutifully in the Examiner. It perplexed many, however, that private services had already been held. Tongues wagged even more when Vivian Blackburn had a complete breakdown and had to be whisked away to a private sanitarium.

  Jake was not happy for having made the correct assumption as to who might be next in line—and though he had not seen the official reports of how Alexander Blackburn Junior had died, he knew it was connected to the other two murders. He wondered how Adam Haggerty and Sharon Trumbo felt about it.

  Jake reviewed the obituary with great skepticism, particularly knowing about the letters that had been sent and the fact that Alexander Blackburn Junior was considered an “enemy of Arrow Bay” by many. Everyone knew he had close ties with Reed Longhoffer after the second town meeting, when Alex had inadvertently spilled the proverbial beans, and it wouldn’t have taken much prodding from any competent researcher to find out just how much.

  On the seventh of November, a few days after Blackburn Junior’s obituary had appeared in the paper, Sam called Jake to let him know the Chinook was about to be towed to her permanent moorage spot just west of Wilde Park.

  Jake grabbed Barnaby and hopped into the Cruiser with his camera. He drove down to Sutherland Shipyards on the waterfront where Sam met him at the gate and took him over to the dock where the Chinook was positioned with two tugs at her sides.

  “Will you look at that,” said Jake, looking in awe at the ship.

  Sam had resurrected a derelict vessel, turning her into the gleaming, streamlined craft she once had been. Her knife-like prow was accented by a stripe of a dark but brilliant red covering a row of portholes for the hotel’s staterooms. The Chinook’s stack, once elongated by British Columbia Ferries, had been restored and cropped back to its original squat, shaved down profile, which blended in with the rakish lines of the former ferry. Jake snapped several pictures of her and was not alone. He spotted Jason taking photos for the Examiner and recognized the names of all three of Seattle’s network affiliates filming the ferry as tugboats moved her out into the channel. Slowly she inched forward, stern first, as she was to be backed into the new mooring spot along the shores of the bay.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry to see her go,” said Sam, with a sigh.

  “Alex been bugging you again about changes?”

  “Not so much this week, now that he’s got all his stuff moved in. It was little things here and there. I don’t think he’s ever going to be completely satisfied, but that’s the way it goes with Mr. Blackburn.”

  “Where is he, anyway? This is his big day. I thought for sure he’d be around for the photo op at any rate.”

  “He was here a while ago. He gave his speech and broke a bottle of very expensive champagne over her bow. I saw some noticeable cringes when he did that, by the way.”

  “Hmm.” Jake walked back through the yard and by one of the workshops. He heard raised voices and slowed down, motioning for Sam to catch up.

  “What is it?”

  “Shh! Quiet,” he said, creeping over to the side of the workshop. He thought he had recognized the voices and he hadn’t been disappointed. Adam Haggerty and Alex were standing behind the shed eyeing one another.

  Alex was standing with his arms crossed, not looking at all happy with Haggerty, who looked disheveled as if he hadn’t slept for quite some time.

  “I’m telling you again, Adam, back off. I let you know where I was the day Dad was killed. I know you’ve verified that.”

  “You left out that you had threatened him,” said Adam, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

  “He hit me in a public place. Of course I threatened him. I certainly didn’t mean it, as violence goes against everything I believe in.”

  “Alex, this is me you’re talking to. I certainly know what you’re capable of.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m sorry, Adam. It’s my fault we haven’t spent much time together. I understand why you’d have that impression of me…but these last several years I’ve done everything I could to shed that. I can’t say this without sounding schizophrenic, but that was the old Alex Blackburn. Honestly, Adam.”

  “I know what you’ve been trying to do, and I applaud it, Alex, I really do. You’ll just have to forgive the skeptical cop in me and give me some more time to wrap my head around it, okay?”

  “Fair enough. I’m very happy you have someone you can work with who you trust on this.”

  “Sharon’s one of about three people I trust at Arrow Bay PD,” said Adam, sounding sorrowful.

  “I know it doesn’t come easy, particularly with that jackass Nelson Dorval waiting to plant the knife in your back at every turn. Remember, though, it’s Dorval who has the damaged credibility with some in this town—not you.”

  Haggerty sighed. “I’ve got to get this one solved, Alex.”

  “Then let people help you. You already had Jake point out the Grimm’s Fairytale angle to you.”

  “We’d gotten there at about the same time, funnily enough. You know, Alex, I’m under a lot of pressure to haul you in. Dorval in particular thinks you’re the one doing this.”

  “Dorval’s lucky I’m not running straight to Derek Brauer to let him know exactly how dear old Dad was killed. I’m goddamned cooperating with the police. You remind that pink-nosed son of a bitch of that when you report back to him. As much as he’d like to pin this whole thing on me and get me neatly out of Arrow Bay, both of you know perfectly well I was in full view of a dozen witnesses when my old man was killed.”

  “Oh, he’s got an answer for that.”

  “I suspect he does. Something about how people with my kind of money never get their hands dirty.”

  “It’s uncannily like being in the same room with Dorval.” Alex shook his head. “So that is what this is all about. It always comes down to money, doesn’t it? Dorval resents those who have it. He always has. Even when we were kids. He always failed to realize it never made a damn bit of difference to me.”

  “Dorval, like more than a few in this town, is still prejudiced by your admittedly wild youth.”

  “They don’t even know the half of it. You don’t either, Adam. You and I met when I was at the turning point in my life. You met the…”

  “The kinder, gentler Alex?”

  “Exactly.”

  “For the record I don’t think you had anything to do with this. But there are still some questions I’ve got, and you’ve got to be a little more forthcoming, Alex,” said Haggerty.

  “I’ve never lied to you, Adam.”

  “Maybe not, Alex, but you have left out large chunks of the truth. Last year? Everything that happened with the Crane case? That is all sorts of screwed up. A one-eyed monkey can see that. I don’t think anyone but Dorval gives a damn about that case. Everyone else—myself included—was just happy to have it closed.”

  “You’re convinced that the correct perpetrator was caught?” Alex asked.

  “Absolutely. There was a raft of forensic evidence eight miles high.
I have no doubt as to who was responsible. There were, however, some lingering questions…”

  Alex grunted. “The perpetrator was caught. Dorval has it on authority who it was. He’s got the county sheriff’s reports. All the evidence corroborated what McEvoy reported. The case is closed. Why does he care?”

  “Because he feels something isn’t right there, and he’d just love to tie you to it somehow. Me? I’ve got enough work to last me a lifetime, much less go on with a case that was out of jurisdiction and closed. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what…ah…additional information you might have?”

  “Some snowy evening,” said Alex slowly. “After you’ve retired.”

  Haggerty laughed. “I understand. Though can I tell you of my suspicions sometime?”

  “Oh sure. After the Chinook is open. Over steaks and a bottle of Johnny Walker. You can deliver a message to Dorval. Tell him to back the hell off on that Crane case.”

  “That sounded like the old Alex there. The one that used to warn people not to screw with him. You gave me a shiver.”

  “I’m sorry, but I protect the things I value highly,” said Alex. “And the people, Adam. For the record, I count you among them.”

  “I appreciate that, Alex. As for Dorval…”

  “Let it eat the guts out of him. He won’t find anything.”

  “You really do trust the Finnigan brothers, don’t you? And Mr. O’Conner?” Haggerty asked.

  “I’d trust them with my life, Adam. Jake is like the little brother I never had. Sam, too.” He sighed. “I suspect you’ve drawn the lines together a little? In regard to them?”

  “Oh, a little.”

  “If the Finnigan-O’Conners had anything to do with Susan Crane, I can assure you it was nothing to do with her demise. The correct person was caught.”

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt of that. I’ve just suspected that Mr. Finnigan being so adamant about not getting involved with this case had more to do with the death of his friend from high school.”

  “And naturally your razor-sharp mind latched onto that. The question is, does Dorval have any idea?”