Gravedigger

by Joseph Hansen

  “They hadn’t spoken in years,” she said. “That day when I found them naked in bed together was the last time they ever saw each other.”

  “They had a place they went to on those weekends, didn’t they?” Dave stood up. “And you followed them there. Why? You’d watched them go off together a thousand times.”

  “To the high Sierras, to the desert, to Baja. Ocean fishing in a hire boat. So they said. Then, one weekend when Chass was busy and Don took the kids, he made a mistake. And Serenity told me all about Uncle Don’s little house in the woods, about finding so many of her daddy’s things there. What things? Oh, clothes and things.” Anna Westover smiled thinly. “Out of the mouths of babes? It was fantastic. All those years I hadn’t suspected a thing. And suddenly, at that moment, I knew—I knew and understood it all.”

  “It was up Yucca Canyon, wasn’t it?”

  She stared. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “And you remembered it when I told you your husband had gone somewhere to hide—when I asked you if you couldn’t suggest where that would be. But you kept your mouth shut.”

  “Because I never in the world would have thought he’d go back there. He promised me.” She meant it.

  “Doesn’t divorce invalidate that kind of promise?” Dave said. “What’s the address?”

  “Address?” She laughed dryly. “It’s wilderness up there. The road’s no more than a pair of ruts. I don’t think it even has a name. Little box canyon, all overgrown.”

  Dave stepped to the door. “Can you lead me there?”

  She pushed at her hair and laughed helplessly. “You must be mad. It’s been ten years. I don’t know how I got there. I simply followed them.” Her voice trembled, her eyes swam. “I don’t know how I got out. I was blind with outrage and hurt and disappointment and emotions there aren’t even any names for.” She opened a desk drawer and fumbled tissues out of it to dry her eyes. “No, Mr. Brandstetter—I’m afraid I cannot lead you there.” She blew her nose. “It’s like a place in a nightmare. Something you wake up from, hoping you’ll never sleep again.”

  “Did they rent it?” Dave asked.

  “What?” She blinked, frowning. “Rent it? No. No, they didn’t rent it. Didn’t I tell you? Don built it. It belonged to Don. He built it so they could have—” But she didn’t go on with that. “It belonged to Don,” she said again, dully. She shrugged. “Perhaps it still does.”

  Dave pulled open the door. “Bet on it.” The chairs weren’t in a circle anymore. They had been pushed against the wall. A game was going on that involved running, squealing, and falling down. Dave said to Anna Westover, “I’ll let you know,” and walked down the long room, trying not to stumble over children.

  “You’ve hurt yourself.” Thelma Gaillard was more noticing than Anna Westover had been. She pushed the screen door and put her head out into the rain to look down the stairs. “You drove here with only one arm?”

  “It isn’t too hard,” Dave said. “There’s an automatic shift. May I come in?”

  “What’s happened?” Looking anxious, she pushed the screen door wider so he could enter. The kitchen was not as tidy as before. Now there were more dirty dishes, not just on the shelf by the sink but on the table. She looked as if she hadn’t combed her hair today. She was wearing the same faded jeans and torn sneakers and this time a sweat-top with a hood, dark blue. “Have you found Don?”

  “No, but with your help I’m going to.”

  She shut the door, shut out the cold breath of the rain. “I’m not so sure of that. Don withdrew a lot of money from our savings. Almost all. Twenty thousand dollars.” She peered up at him. “Did you know that? Was it to give to Chass?”

  Dave nodded. “And Chass promptly lost it. If you were thinking Don used it to travel to some far-off place—he didn’t. He’s at his cabin in Yucca Canyon.”

  She had started toward the dim hallway that led to the living room. She turned back. “His cabin? What cabin?”

  “How did you happen to learn about the missing money?” Dave asked.

  “Well, I phoned the police because you said I should. It was a few days, and then a detective came. He asked a lot of questions. I couldn’t tell him much.” She smiled wanly. “But you already know that. He said I should check through Don’s papers—bills, letters, anything, for clues to where he might have gone or why. Well, I looked but I didn’t find anything that meant anything. The detective said check with the bank. At first they wouldn’t tell me. Then he went with me.” She gave a little unhappy laugh. “I never thought I’d ride in a police car in my life. And they let him see the account record and that’s how we found out. But it didn’t help find him, did it?”

  Dave moved toward the hall. “Where are these papers? In his room?” He found the open door to the room with the neatly made bed. “Is this his room?”

  “Yes…” She said it doubtfully. She stood in the door from the kitchen, fingers pressed against her mouth, eyes alarmed. “But I’ve been through everything. He’s so private, Don is. He hates for people to—”

  “I think he’s with Westover,” Dave said. “And Westover may be a dangerous man to be with right now.” He laid his hand on the arm in the sling. “If it keeps him from getting hurt, he won’t mind a little invasion of his privacy.” The room had only one window, and the rain outside made the light from the window dim. Dave groped for a wall switch and turned on a lamp by the bed. He stepped inside, hearing her footsteps come down the hall, and stop in the bedroom doorway, unwilling to come farther. Don Gaillard didn’t give an impression of being able to intimidate anyone, but he had intimidated her. “Closet?” Dave asked. “Chest?”

  She jerked her chin. “Bottom drawer.”

  It was a green-metal fishing-tackle box. She got the key. Dave sat on the edge of the bed, the box on his knees where the lamplight would catch it. He unlocked it, lifted the lid, reached for his reading glasses, and remembered that the lens had popped out and he’d forgotten to ask Cecil to put it back. He squinted and sorted through the papers. None related to the cabinetmaking business: these were personal, insurance, property payments, doctor bills, income tax. There was a membership in a so-called health club that was for homosexuals only, though the paper didn’t say so. There was a worn, soiled envelope of snapshots—big, barrel-chested Gaillard, slim little Westover. He tucked them back, frowning.

  “You see what I mean?” Thelma Gaillard said.

  Dave grunted. Here was an envelope marked in large type “Joint Consolidated Tax Bill.” The flap was loose. He pulled a tax bill from the envelope. It wasn’t easy for him to read without the glasses, but he made out the address on the bill. Blurrily. It was for this place, shop and living quarters. He worked the bill back into its envelope and picked up another envelope like it and slid the bill out of that one. He held it under the lamp and narrowed his eyes, trying to focus. His heart bumped. Burro Trail, Yucca Canyon. He laid the bill in the green tin box, closed the lid, turned the key, held the box up to her. “You never knew Don had a cabin that he built himself for weekends?”

  “Is that where he’s gone?” she said. “I never knew.”

  Dave stood up. “May I use your phone again, please?” He had to let the receiver dangle on its cord, knocking the wall, while he turned the dial. He caught hold of the receiver and held it to his ear. Not expecting Cecil to answer—it would be hours before Cecil got back from Perez. Dave’s own voice answered on tape. He waited for the tone, checking his watch. “Three-forty P.M.,” he said. “The address is 29934 Burro Trail, Yucca Canyon. I’m going there now.”

  Thelma Gaillard watched him hang the receiver in its fork, her face creased with worry. She wrung her hands. “You’ll find him now, won’t you? You’ll find Don?”

  “I’ll find him.” Dave gave her a quick smile and hurried out the door and down the stairs in the solemn rain. He didn’t feel solemn. He felt elated.

  14

  THE CANYON WAS HUNG with rags of sooty cloud this aft
ernoon. The rain fell steady and cold. Anything able to turn green had turned green—oaks, pines, chaparral. The grass among the rocks was thick and high. The potholes in the twisting roads were wider today, deeper, but the Jaguar didn’t let him feel them. It took the bends, elbows, the steep lifts and falls of the roads without effort. Even so, his good arm grew tired, his hand on the wheel ached.

  He stopped on a plank bridge above the tumbling muddy stream and studied again the map he’d picked up at a shiny bookstore in Santa Monica. He had to squint to make out the map. Burro Trail was no more than a thin scribble maybe a quarter-inch long. It was far back in from the roads he’d prowled along the other morning. He hadn’t come within miles of it. There’d been no chance that he’d sight the Rolls, the panel truck, the old Impala.

  He laid the map on the empty seat beside him and sat flexing his stiff fingers and frowning to himself. He had passed and left far behind the crossroads with the filling station, general store, building yard. Should he drive back there and ring Salazar? Being alone when he found Westover didn’t worry him. Gaillard didn’t worry him. But what about the girl? If she was Serenity, how sane was she, how stable? Maybe, after all, she had been the one who tried to kill him.

  He gave his head a shake. This wasn’t like him. This case was humdrum—attempted fraud on an insurance company. He’d handled a hundred of those in his time, more than a hundred. The car smash and his aches and pains were getting to him. And his goddamn age. And the gruesome background of this one. He saw those shacky blue buildings again out there in the desert, the sandy holes where the girls had been buried. He shivered, though the heating system of the car worked well. He wasn’t even wearing his jacket. He wished he knew what Cecil had learned at Perez. Had the Impala come from Jay’s dusty lot of high-gloss jalopies? Ah, the hell with it. He was acting like an old woman. He started the car and rumbled it off the loose planks of the bridge and went to find Burro Trail.

  It climbed a box canyon as Anna Westover said, two ruts that the new spring grass was doing its best to make invisible. The rainy daylight was dying fast, helped by tall trees, pines and pin oaks. He peered past the batting of the windshield wipers, hoping Westover had switched a light on that would lead him to the cabin. But there was only gloom. He didn’t want to show headlamps. He wanted to arrive with as little warning as possible. In the TR this would have been unthinkable. It was noisy. The Jaguar’s engine purred like the big cat it was named for, powerful, no need for bluster.

  Was what he saw now, back among the trees, the straight line of a roof? He slowed the car, inching it along the bumpy ruts, keeping in his sights that horizontal line until he was sure. He stopped the car, switched off the ignition, set the gears. He stretched awkwardly to paw his jacket off the rear seat, and got out of the car. Under the chill sifting of the rain, he worked his good arm into the jacket sleeve and hiked the left side of the jacket up over his shoulder, over the arm in the sling. He crouched to set the handbrake, straightened up, and quietly closed the door. He stood for half a minute, gazing up the trail. Had Lovejoy sent that letter? Had Westover picked it up? He sure as hell hoped so. He drew a long breath, expelled the breath, and began to climb the trail.

  Even in the growing dark, it wasn’t hard to see the marks cars had made coming down out of the woods and going back up into the woods. He followed the marks, slipping sometimes in the mud. The house was farther than he had judged. He encountered the Impala first, facing him, front fender crumpled, dripping rust in the rain, the headlamp smashed. Beyond the Impala stood the rain-glossed Rolls. And beyond that, half in some kind of ditch, tilted, Gaillard’s panel truck. The light was bad, the paint faded, as Thelma Gaillard had said, but he could make out the yellow lettering, as much of it as showed above the dripping brush: “llard” and, below that “fted furniture.” He didn’t know why it put him in mind of an abandoned hearse.

  The cabin looked deserted. It wasn’t. Sounds told him that—the slap of a screen door, the drum of heels on a porch. A rifle went off. The slamming noise it made echoed in the rainy hills. A bullet whined past his ear. Someone shouted, “Hold it right there, mister.” Dave stepped behind a tree trunk. The voice called, “You’re on private property. You’re trespassing. Get off.”

  “Charles Westover?” Dave called. Could it be Westover? It sounded like a boy’s voice. The rifle slammed again, the bullet hit the tree trunk, and knocked loose bark that fell on Dave. He brushed it out of his hair. He shouted, “I’m from Banner Insurance.” The rifle went off again. But the bullet didn’t sing, and it didn’t strike anything. He thought it had been fired into the air, and he couldn’t make sense of that. He shouted, “We wrote you a letter. About your claim. Did you get the letter?” The gun went off again. The bullet hit the tree high up. A pinecone rattled down through wet branches and hit the ground with a splash. Dave shouted, “I need your signature on some forms. So we can pay you.” Why was he saying these things? Why didn’t he just turn around and leave? He turned around to leave, but someone was in his way, someone scrawny. The blond girl, in her raveled sweater, dirty jeans, and dark glasses. The rifle fire had been only cover to let her reach him. A big black machine pistol was in her little hand, and she pushed it into his sore ribs and said, “Not this way, that way. We’re going in the house.”

  “What is Westover so afraid of?” Dave said.

  “You think about being afraid,” she said. “Don’t worry about him. Move. Move.” She jabbed him with the gun barrel and pushed him. He wished she sounded nervous. She sounded confident, even bored. He walked ahead of her, watching his step on the rough and muddy ground in the dying light. As if his falling or not falling were a matter of importance. He grinned sourly to himself.

  “You’re Serenity,” he said, “aren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s over,” she said. “It’s only just beginning. Climb the steps.”

  “Why aren’t you with Azrael?” he said.

  She laughed and poked the gun hard into his lower back, right against the spine. “Climb,” she said.

  He climbed. The stairs were well made. Paint had worn off them but the planks were thick and sturdy, meant to last. He thought about Gaillard, hanging onto this place in the frail hope of getting Westover back here some sweet impossible day. Only it hadn’t been impossible, had it? It had just been all wrong. At the top of the stairs, Dave lifted his eyes. The rifleman was scrawny too. He held the rifle under his arm, pointed at Dave. The roof overhang made the porch dark, so there was no way to see his features. He looked as blond-haired as Serenity. And his eyes were so pale they seemed to glow.

  He backed through the cabin door, keeping the rifle barrel leveled at Dave. The girl pushed Dave ahead of her across the porch and through the door into a room that was pitch-dark. The door closed. A match was struck, and the flame showed Dave a second man, slight, gray-haired, bending above a kerosene lamp on a table of thick, polished planks. The man touched the flame of the match to the wick of the lamp and the wick took fire softly. The man blew out the match and set a slim, smoky glass chimney over the flame. The top part of the man’s right ear was missing. He looked at Dave sadly and slumped down on a spooled maple sofa with faded chintz cushions. He looked thoroughly beaten.

  “Are you Lovejoy?” he said.

  “I work for him,” Dave said. “I’m Brandstetter.”

  “That’s good,” the rifleman said. “That means we’ve got a name to contact at the insurance company. That’s very good. Where did you leave your car? Is there anyone in it? You came alone?” His pale eyes were crazy and he smiled. It was a wide smile meaning nothing. He had cut off his holy-man hair and beard. But there was no mistaking him.

  “You’re Azrael,” Dave said.

  “Azrael died in the desert on the way to Las Vegas,” Azrael said. He sat down at the other end of the sofa, the rifle laid carelessly across his knees. But Dave wasn’t going to escape. He could feel the girl’s breath on the back of his neck. “His soul is in
limbo, waiting to be reborn in a far country, to begin a new life.”

  “You had Serenity follow you to Nevada,” Dave said. “You dumped the van out there in that barranca and doubled back here.” He looked at Westover. “It wasn’t your idea to apply for her insurance. It was theirs. They wanted the money to escape on.”

  Westover sighed and nodded glumly.

  “You didn’t leave your house to avoid creditors,” Dave said. “These two brought you here.” He glanced over his shoulder at Serenity. “You remembered this place. Uncle Don’s cabin in the woods. A good place to hide until the insurance company paid up.”

  “Too many neighbors down there,” she said.

  “Where is Gaillard?” Dave said.

  Westover made a sound and put his hands over his face.

  “You want to see Gaillard?” Dave had thought Azrael’s smile was wide before. It stretched wider now. He looked straight into Dave’s eyes. The effect was like an electric shock, but less pleasant. Dave tensed to keep from shivering. Azrael jumped up off the couch, laid the rifle on the table, scratched a match on its blue cardboard box, and tilted the chimney of a lantern to set its wick afire. He picked up the lantern by its wire-loop handle. “Come with me.” He went down the room, making a sound that might have been a chuckle. It resembled the noise hyenas make around a kill. Serenity’s gun nudged Dave and he moved after Azrael.

  Dave asked Westover, “Why don’t you run away?”

  Westover’s mouth twisted. “Because if I try, he’ll kill Serenity. Oh, he will. Oh, yes. And you, too.”

  “Move,” Serenity said. And Dave moved, through a door Azrael had opened and down a short hallway, half-open doors on either hand, and through a kitchen strewn with empty cans and wrappers and stinking of garbage. The lantern swung in Azrael’s hand. At a door that led outside, he turned back to give Dave another look from those insane pale eyes and to make the hyena noise again. He was amused. He pushed out a screen door and the lantern stairstepped downward. Here were more of Gaillard’s sturdy steps. They ended in a puddle. The rain fell through the swinging nimbus of the lantern up ahead, sparkling. Dave stumbled on clods and rocks. Brush lashed his trousers, soaking them, chilling his legs. Branches slapped his face. He wiped the wet off his face with his hand. The land sloped off. Azrael had moved faster than they. The lantern stood on the ground and Azrael moved in its glow. For a second, Dave couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Then he knew. He had a spade, and he was digging. Dave stopped.