Clouds Without Rain

by Gaus, P. L.

  “It’s not just the driver,” Mr. Smith said.

  Ellie Troyer’s voice came softly over the intercom. “A gentleman to see you, Captain.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “It’d be better if you came out, now.”

  Newell pushed his muscular frame out of Robertson’s chair and said, “I’ll be back.”

  Branden rose to refill his coffee cup and poured one cup each for the Smiths. They sat quietly in their chairs and waited with the mugs in their laps. Branden lingered by one of the tall office windows and squinted into the glare of bright morning sun. He pulled the shades and drank his coffee, remembering dim, watered, forest glens—cool, quiet, and peaceful.

  Through the thin paneled wall, they heard a raising of voices. Branden recognized Arden Dobrowski’s. He set his coffee cup down beside the coffee maker on the credenza, turned to the Smiths, said, “I still want to hear what you’ve got for the captain,” and went down the hall to Ellie’s front counter.

  Dobrowski scowled bitterly and said, “I want that man locked up,” pointing a finger at Branden.

  Newell said, “You’re not pressing charges, remember, Dobrowski?”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  Branden started purposefully through the counter’s swinging door, but Newell clamped both of his hands on Branden’s shoulders and hauled him back.

  Branden wrestled free of the captain’s grip and stood where Newell had planted him. “Don’t go anywhere, Dobrowski,” Branden said. “You’re a suspect in Britta’s murder.”

  Dobrowski guffawed. “Get real, Branden. I’ve lost a tooth on account of you.”

  “You’ve got a bad habit of not listening, Dobrowski. You’re a suspect. Don’t leave town.”

  Dobrowski whirled around and stomped out of the jail.

  Ellie asked, “Did he just press charges against the professor?”

  “Not that I heard,” Newell replied. He stiffened next to the counter, flexed the taut muscles in his arms and shoulders, and demanded, “What was that all about, Mike?”

  “Dobrowski and I don’t get along.”

  “I can see that,” Newell said. “Now tell me why.”

  Branden hesitated with a scowl on his face, and Newell repeated, “Tell me why, Mike.”

  Heated, Branden said, “About a month before Britta divorced him, she called me out to her place. When I got there, she was bruised, had a black eye, and her lip was split. I stayed with her a while, and Dobrowski came back. Even with me there, he started in on her again. He was drunk and abusive and took several swings at her. I had to lay him out. That’s when Britta started talking about divorcing him.”

  “And what was that about Dobrowski’s being a suspect?”

  “Somehow Dobrowski’s gonna benefit from Britta’s death. An insurance policy. Something in her will. She always took out partner’s insurance, one for the other, in business affairs.”

  “So?”

  “Britta owned most of Dobrowski’s auto dealerships at one time. Dobrowski’s probably still got a policy on her.”

  “Nevertheless, you’re gonna let me decide who is a suspect and who isn’t,” Newell said officiously.

  Branden shrugged, and said, “I was just giving him something to think about. Besides, he could have framed Yoder for Sommers easily enough.”

  Newell stepped wearily back into the sheriff’s office, saying, “This is a simple case, Mike. You’re thinking too hard again.”

  Branden smiled wanly and took a seat beside the sheriff’s desk. He nodded to the Smiths and said, “You’ll be interested in the answer to this question.” Turning to Newell, he asked, “What did Jimmy Weston bring you yesterday that got you that warrant so fast?”

  Out at Ellie’s counter, there was a commotion, and just as Robert Cravely pushed through the sheriff’s office door, Ellie spoke over the intercom, “Sorry, Bobby. He wouldn’t wait.”

  Cravely bounded into the office, dropped his heavy briefcase onto the floor, and began wiping sweat from his face with a crumpled and stained handkerchief.

  Newell sat rigidly behind the desk, neither acknowledging Cravely nor letting his disapproval of the little man show on his face. Branden watched Cravely and realized the insurance agent had not recognized the Smiths.

  Cravely took a stance with his feet planted wide and, ignoring the professor and the Smiths, challenged, “I know you’ve got bullets and a rifle from Yoder’s trailer that will exonerate my driver.”

  The captain said nothing.

  Cravely knelt and opened his briefcase on the floor. When he had pushed himself up, he held a document of several pages, bound in a black clamp folder. “This is my final report,” he said, and tossed the document onto the sheriff’s desk.

  Newell glanced at it, but didn’t pick it up. “I don’t care what you’ve got there, Cravely. We’re charging your driver with a DUI, multiple vehicular homicides, depraved indifference, whatever. I’ve just come from Phil Schrauzer’s funeral, and I can promise you this. You’re gonna pay off Schrauzer’s widow. Robertson’s medical bills, too, and the parents of the boy who died out there!” He cautioned the Smiths with a glance, and they sat tight. Denny Smith’s face was flushed a brilliant red, and Lenora Smith had a death grip on the arms of the chair. “Whatever Larry Yoder might have done, your driver put that truck into a jackknife because he was drunk, not because Yoder shot a horse!”

  Cravely snorted. “Yoder killed more than those people, Captain. I know about Ms. Sommers.”

  Branden sat up straighter to say something, but Newell cut him off. “Maybe Yoder did kill Britta Sommers. That doesn’t let you off the hook for the others.”

  “Yoder killed everyone,” Cravely snapped and bent to lift his briefcase. “You have my report.”

  Denny Smith rose slowly from his chair, fists clenched at his sides, and turned to face the insurance agent. Taking hold of the small man by his lapels, he boosted Cravely violently off his feet and pushed him back against the office wall where Robertson’s collection of police arm patches was displayed. Cravely squirmed, and a handful of patches fell from the wall behind him.

  Newell managed to take Smith from the back, pulling his grip on Cravely loose. Pushing Smith away, Newell stepped around to put himself between the two men.

  Cravely yelped, “You rotten cur!” and Smith lunged again at the man. Newell held Smith back, the muscles in his neck and arms straining his uniform.

  “That’s enough, Smith,” Newell said, and pushed the angry man back into his chair.

  Lenora Smith sat quietly weeping. Denny Smith got up again and stood behind her chair, holding her shoulders. He looked angrily at Cravely and started talking in a forced, yet soft tone, laced with bitter animosity.

  “We know the whole story, Mr. Cravely. None of it, I am quite sure, will be found in that report of yours.

  “You see, we hired a detective in Chicago, and we know all about your company and that driver who killed our son. That man has been fired once before. For drunk driving, Cravely. He’s had a history of DUIs, and he crashed another of the company’s trucks last year. So they fired him. But what do you know! The regular driver was out sick last week, and your company re-hired the bastard because they didn’t have anyone else to make the run.

  “Well, he made the run, all right. Stopped off in Wooster to have a few cold ones. The bartender there has recognized his picture. Then he showed up drunk at his first stop, and the Amish carpenter remembers trying to sober the guy up with coffee. Tried to stall him. Keep him from driving.

  “But, no! Your guy had to get back in that truck. He was drunk, Cravely, before he crested that hill, and it’s your company who’s to blame. I don’t care what’s in your report. Nothing about our son’s death is settled. Not to my way of thinking.”

  Smith scowled at Cravely for another half minute and then helped his wife out of her chair, and they left.

  Cravely’s face was flushed red. He made a pretense of straightening his
suit coat, and bent to pick up his briefcase. Then he turned sharply and stomped out of the room.

  Branden shook his head. He picked up Cravely’s report in the black binder, flipped some pages and set it down. With a new sense of urgency, he asked the captain again, “What did Weston give you that secured the search warrant?”

  Newell refocused his thoughts with an effort. “What?” he eventually said to Branden.

  “You said Weston came in here yesterday and told you something new to help get a search warrant for Yoder’s place. What was that?”

  Newell thought for a moment. “He told us Larry Yoder had told him all about shooting Weaver’s horse. Back when Weston took him out to his parents’ house on Thursday afternoon.”

  Branden shifted in his chair. “Why’d he wait this long to tell you that?”

  “I don’t know. He said he didn’t take it seriously at first, knowing Yoder as he did. But then he had just heard we were trying for a search warrant and thought maybe he could help.”

  Branden remembered a small detail from the accident scene and observed, “This whole thing is starting to make some sense to me, Bobby. Do you have Ricky Niell’s notes from the accident?”

  Newell rose and walked out to Ellie’s radio consoles. “See if you can raise Niell,” he said. “Ask him where his notes are on the Weaver accident.”

  Back in the office, Newell found Branden sitting on the edge of his chair, hands cradling his forehead. Soon Ellie had an answer and retrieved Niell’s notebook from a file drawer in the squad room. She carried it into the sheriff’s office and laid it on the desk. As she stood there, Branden roused from his thoughts, looked around, and saw Niell’s spiral notebook. Newell handed it to him, and Branden said, “Thanks,” distantly.

  “You’ve figured something out?” Newell inquired.

  Branden shrugged, said, “Maybe,” and left the captain sitting at his desk.

  As he paged through Ricky Niell’s notebook, Branden walked the block and a half north to the Holmes Gazette. He asked to see Nancy Blain, was directed to the second floor, and found her coming out of a back room. As she came forward, Branden said, “Nancy, I need your help.”

  Blain motioned him to her black metal desk, next to a bank of matching file cabinets. She took a seat at the desk, and Branden said, standing, “I remember your taking photographs at the accident the day J. R. Weaver was killed.”

  She nodded.

  “I’d like to borrow those prints for the afternoon.”

  Blain said, “I never thanked you for what you did for Eric last year.”

  Branden remembered the tranquil summer afternoon when they had talked about Eric Bromfield, while she took photos of an Amish valley.

  Her hair was still short. She was dressed in brown leather walking shoes, jeans, and a simple white blouse. She took off a pair of glasses and dropped them into the center desk drawer, saying, “OSHA doesn’t let you wear contacts in darkrooms anymore,” and added, “Thanks for Eric, Professor.”

  Branden said, “I’m glad I was of some help,” and “I’ll only need them for a few hours.”

  Blain turned to the file cabinet nearest to her desk. From the second drawer, she drew several folders of six-by-nine prints, and laid them on her desk for the professor. “They’re all numbered, but try to keep them in order anyway.”

  Branden tucked the folders under his left arm, shook her hand, and said, “Thanks.”

  “You’ll bring them back today?” she asked.

  “I might need them until tomorrow, but I doubt it. Probably later this afternoon.”

  Blain said, “OK,” and Branden headed for his car, leafing through the photos as he walked. Halfway through the stack, he spotted one photo in particular, and stopped beside his car to study it, a shot of a dull yellow Ford F150 pickup, with its windows rolled down and a splinter of wood with tatters of ripped black cloth lying across the windshield. Branden eased in behind the wheel, laid the photos on the passenger’s seat of his car, noted the number on the back of the photo, and wrote in a spiral notebook: Photo 28—Windows Down.

  At his house, Branden dropped Blain’s photographs on the kitchen table and checked the one phone message indicated on his answering machine. It was Ricky Niell, saying, “Doc, the captain asked me to give you an update: I checked on Dobrowski. He was sleeping off an all-night drunk in the Wayne County Jail when Sommers’s house was torched. I called Wooster to verify that, so he’s got an alibi.”

  Branden deleted the message, sat down with the photos, and flipped through the little spiral book, laying out certain photos when they matched Niell’s account. He became more anxious each time he read Niell’s notes from the accident scene and from the interviews with MacAfee, Weston, and Kent. And then he had it. The whole of it, wrapped up neatly with a bow.

  The phone rang, and he rose slowly from the table and answered it.

  “Mike, this is Henry DiSalvo.”

  Branden didn’t speak at first.

  “The will, Mike.”

  “Weaver’s?”

  “Right. I’m going to read it Wednesday morning. Only two people are to be present. Andy Weaver and one witness of his choosing. Other relatives are to be informed by post.”

  “Strange,” Branden said and glanced back at the photos spread out on the kitchen table. “Say, I don’t think I’ll need that appointment at 11:00 A.M., but why couldn’t you read the will earlier?”

  DiSalvo chuckled. “Weaver had stipulated that I was to wait to see which of his relatives would inquire about his money. All of them have, now, except Andy Weaver. He alone has made no inquiries whatsoever.”

  Back at the kitchen table, Branden slowly closed Ricky Niell’s notes, and put Blain’s photos back in order. He smiled, rapped his knuckles on the tabletop, and sat down with his arms folded over his chest. One person’s movements had given it away. Even the motive was there, plainly in view all along. It only remained to verify certain facts. To discover how things were done, and when.

  29

  Tuesday, August 15

  11:00 A.M.

  ON THE stretch of 515 that runs in front of Weaver’s house, Branden pulled his car onto the right berm facing north, and turned his hazard flashers on. He opened Ricky Niell’s notebook and again read the entries for the first interviews with MacAfee, Weston, and Kent. Then he flipped back to the second interviews, read them slowly and wrote: First Interviews! in his spiral notebook.

  By reference to photos 26 through 29, Branden was able to back his sedan precisely to the spot where the yellow truck had stopped at the time of the accident. He rolled his windows down and sat listening. Over the crest of the hill just beyond Weaver’s drive, he saw a brief puff of black smoke. A semi crested the hill, came down past Weaver’s drive, and went by in the oncoming lane. Branden wrote Schrauzer!— on a line in his notebook.

  He turned his gaze left and studied the burned field on the other side of the road. At the far edge of the field, he could see the break in the trees where Yoder’s trail came out of the woods. In his notebook he wrote: Yoder in plain view.

  Branden pushed all of the photos he had used back into their folders and stacked the folders on the floor, where they’d be less likely to slide around. Then he started his engine, pulled forward on the road, and turned left into Weaver’s drive. As he made the turn, he saw another belch of diesel smoke over the hill. He watched in his rearview mirror, and a semi passed by on the road behind him. On the line where he had written Schrauzer!— he added SMOKE.

  Branden parked his car in the drive, walked around to the back of the house, and tried the door to Weaver’s study. It was locked. He took out a credit card, worked it into the slot between door and frame, at the point where the latch would be, and pushed. The latch gave, and the door opened. He closed it, and in his notebook he wrote: Yoder got at the rifle easily enough.

  Back in front, Branden stood at the end of Weaver’s drive, on the spot where the horse had fallen beside the road. He found a
clear line of sight to Yoder’s shooting position across the field. Line of shot unobstructed.

  At Yoder’s trailer, under the carport, Branden found a new red plastic gas container in plain sight. He checked at the back of the house and found two rusted metal gas cans lined up beside the skirting on the trailer. The cans appeared to be about the same vintage as the mower that stood nearby. He returned to the front, and put the new gas container in the bed of his pickup.

  He came down Yoder’s gravel drive, drove up the hill to Walnut Creek, went through town past the restaurant and the Inn, and took Rt. 39 back to Millersburg. There he found that Missy Taggert had gone to the hospital in Akron. He left the gas can on her autopsy table and wrote a note asking that she compare the residue in the can with the samples Niell had collected at the fire scene.

  While still at Pomerene Hospital, the professor made two calls, one to Holmes Estates in Cleveland, and one to the hospital in Dover.

  At Britta Sommers’s place, Branden parked beside the brick ranch house and walked onto the back patio. Shards of glass were cast about on the flagstones. A line of yellow spray paint marked the run of blackened stone where a gasoline fuse had burnt toward Sommers’s back door. Near the woods, about thirty yards from the house, a yellow circle had been painted on the grass to mark the origin of the fuse. On his hands and knees, Branden felt delicately in the grass and soon found other slivers of window glass. A spar stuck in his palm, and as he worked to remove it, he got up and turned to inspect the trunk of the nearest tree. He saw that it, too, had been peppered with flying glass. In his notebook, he entered: Too short a fuse.

  Inside the house, it appeared that nothing had been touched. The place was still a cluttered mess, even where the fire hadn’t reached. Branden tried unsuccessfully to match this image with the meticulous office Britta had kept. Signs of a search. With this written, he stepped back through the rubble in the kitchen and noted the place in the study where someone had pulled papers out of Britta’s files and made a point of burning them separately. Needed to destroy files went into his notebook.