Die For Me

by Jack Lynch

  “What glitter is that?”

  “Whatever we had between us down in little old Carmel.”

  “You noticed that, did you?”

  “I don’t mean to say it’s your fault. I haven’t been my normally chatty self, either. I’m not sleeping that well up at Maribeth’s. But you also seem a little glum.”

  “I’m beginning to feel a little worn out.”

  She reached across the table and patted one of my hands. “Maybe we can try it again sometime.”

  And that was about as intimate as our conversation got that evening. I drove Bobbie back to the apartment and went up with her and waited until I heard a deadbolt and chain being put on the door, then went down to the car and drove back over to Sausalito.

  I lived in a smallish apartment on a steep hillside overlooking Bridgeway, the main thoroughfare that wound around the water’s edge from the southeast end, through the downtown area then north past a couple of parks and the houseboat community. I was between downtown and the houseboats, avoiding the rollicking noise you could hear from either.

  Usually when I got home, no matter how rough the day had been, I could heave a sigh of relief and feel sane and settled in. It didn’t work this time. I had turned on the television set and played spin the dial, but there was nothing I felt like watching and I turned the set off again. I went into the kitchen and looked around at the refrigerator and stove, stared out the casement window at the stars in the sky overhead, wandered back into the living room and sank down on the sofa to stare into space.

  I was feeling down, and the bodies they were finding up in Jack London State Park weren’t the only reason for it. I got up again and crossed to the remote phone sitting in its mother ship on the kitchen counter and carried it back to the sofa. I punched out Allison’s number in Barracks Cove.

  A man’s voice answered. I looked at my watch; it was nearly ten o’clock.

  “Is Allison there?” I asked.

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Why, are you her new secretary or something?”

  The man hesitated. “No, I am not her secretary. I’ll get her for you.”

  I heard him call her name. He called her Allie. I had tried calling her that one time and she in turn had begun calling me Peetie. I went back to Allison. But now I could sense how it was going to go. I was all wrong thinking I could talk to her just then. I was a little upset and a little bit angry. What I should have done was to just hang up before she got to the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Allison, Bragg here.”

  “Oh. Hello, Peter. Just a moment, please.”

  What was the tone of her voice? Noncommittal? Aloof? Warm? No, not warm. Noncommittal. She had partially covered the receiver and was saying something to somebody she called Gene. It was another moment before she spoke to me again.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked.

  “Same old stuff. How about yourself?”

  “I’m keeping busy.”

  It got a little awkward. She was waiting for me to continue, but for the first time in all the while I’d known Allison I couldn’t think of something easy and comfortable to say to her. I was thinking about the man who apparently had gone into another room.

  “I don’t really have a lot to talk about,” I told her. “Just thought I’d check in and say hello.”

  “I see.”

  “How’s the work going?”

  “Like I said, I’m keeping busy.”

  She sounded evasive. There was another awkward pause, awkward for me, at least. “I was thinking that if I could break away I’d try to get up there someday soon.”

  “Time might be a problem,” she told me. “I don’t know how much I’d have to give you. You’d better phone ahead first.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Do you work evenings as well these days?”

  “No, but I keep busy with other activities.”

  “Oh? What sort?”

  “I’m taking a night course at the local college.”

  “What on?”

  “Theory of Color. It’s a new study being offered up here. I’ve been having some problems. I thought the class might help solve them.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Allison worked in many media, but was a premier watercolorist, a member of the American Watercolor Association and probably one of the top five people in her field on the West Coast. She should have been teaching the class, or even teaching the person teaching it, not taking it herself. “Problems with your painting?”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. You sound a little different, is all.”

  “Do I?”

  The silence built again.

  “How long does the course run?”

  “Twelve weeks. It just started.”

  “How often does it meet?”

  “Two nights a week.”

  “And you have studying or practice to do in between?”

  “Not really. There’s some supplementary reading to do, but mostly it’s just lectures during class meetings and general discussion.”

  “But it’s taking up most of your time.”

  “That, and some other things. Peter, as you know I do have company right now. If there’s anything special…”

  “No, nothing special. Like I said, I just wanted to check in. I’ll let you get back to your company. Have a nice evening.”

  “You too.”

  I tossed the phone aside and had to reassess how her voice had sounded. It wasn’t noncommittal, it was remote. And I just didn’t get it. Allison and I had been close for a good long while now. She was more than girlfriend. She was just plain friend, somebody I told things that I wouldn’t tell another soul. We’d had our disagreements and arguments. She loathed violence in any form and for any reason, and we had made each other angry before, but this conversation tonight had been something entirely different, as if an emotional skid had been upended between us.

  The phone rang again.

  Maybe it was Allison, I told myself. Maybe she had sent the gentleman caller packing and was calling back to shoot a little warm breeze in my direction. Maybe, I told myself, picking up the receiver, I was full of beans.

  “Bragg.”

  “Mr. Bragg, this is Clifford Welch.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to me, but the voice had a familiar ring.

  “I’m the freelance cameraman the lady deputy chased away from that area of the state park where they’re digging up those bodies.”

  “Right, I remember. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to buy you a drink and have a talk. It might be of advantage to both of us.”

  “You mean tonight?”

  “If possible. I’m down here in Sausalito at a pay phone at the bus stop by the Bank of America.”

  “All right. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. There’s a bar right across the street from you, the No Name. I’ll meet you there.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  At least it would take my mind off Allison, I figured, turning out lights. I would have had a drink right then with Attila the Hun if it would accomplish that.

  Welch was wearing the same faded khaki slacks and jacket he’d had on the day before up in the park, along with the old fashioned golf cap with snap brim. We ordered drinks at the bar and took them out to a quiet corner of the open-air patio in back.

  “Usually at times like this I say, ‘Cheers,’ ” Welch told me, “but that doesn’t seem appropriate considering the circumstances we met under. So, to your health.”

  I returned the gesture, sipped at the drink and put it down on the table. “How did you learn who I was?”

  Welch made a chuckling noise. “I’m in the news business, Mr. Bragg, same as you used to be. I’ve learned quite a bit about you. A deputy up by the press area told me who you were, and some of the other newsies there knew you and filled me in some on your background. No mystery about it. But the most interesting thing, to m
e at least, was to learn that some woman psychic you know is what put the sheriff onto all this in the first place.”

  “Now I am really curious where you heard that.”

  “Sources, Mr. Bragg. I know some people in the Sonoma sheriff’s office. I know people in a lot of police and sheriff’s departments. Only way a freelance like myself can survive.”

  “I’m not really happy about the psychic angle coming out.”

  “Well, it hasn’t really come out, you see. The sheriff’s spokesmen won’t confirm it. Everybody’s badgering them about it though, the other newsies, I mean. That’s why I wanted to have this chat with you. With your being a reporter one time, you know that with a story this big, the identity of the psychic woman is going to come out sooner or later. I’d like to be the first one to get to her. Just to shoot some tape of her. Where she lives, things like that. I figure it might be easier on her that way. Instead of her having to deal with a whole pack of newspaper and radio and TV people clamoring on her doorstep, I could tape record her in a controlled environment. I’d make it as easy as possible on her. Set it up for whenever she wants. Then she could issue any kind of statement she might feel comfortable with.

  “I figure I’d be able to make copies of the tape and offer it, for a fee of course, to all the TV stations that might want it. They’d all have a chance to get the same tape, and the psychic woman can say that’s the only session she’s going to sit still for.”

  I thought about it for a moment. He made a lot of sense. “I’ll tell her what you said, but don’t get your hopes up. This is causing her a lot of distress. She’s reluctant to talk to people about her psychic abilities even under the best of circumstances. And these aren’t the best of circumstances.”

  “Hoo boy, isn’t that the truth. But that’s why I think you should ask the lady to consider my proposition. There’s just no way she’s going to be able to hide from the press through all this. I should think she’d jump at the chance to make a little tape available in such painless fashion. She wouldn’t have to say boo to me. I can just explain what I want and let her decide how she wants to do it.”

  “In the unlikely event she agrees to it, I’d want to be there when you do it.”

  “Sure, of course. She can have you there, the cops, the next-door neighbors, anybody she wants. Just so I can be there with my minicam.”

  “Do you have one of your business cards? I’ll try to get an answer for you tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure enough,” he said, digging out his wallet. “There’s a machine on the phone; you can leave a message. I’ll be getting out of there pretty early to drive back up to Glen Ellen.”

  The card he handed me had just his firm’s name and a phone number on it. “Where’s your base of operations?”

  “I work out of my home. Over in the Richmond District in the city. It’d be easy to swing by her place whenever she might agree to do it.”

  I gave him a quick appraisal while I finished my drink. Welch had a fairly prominent Adam’s apple and didn’t look as if he’d shaved that day, and he still talked with that lilting rural twang to his voice, but I had a feeling a lot of that was just an image he wanted to project. Why, I couldn’t say. He was a strange bird.

  We left the bar together. I wished him a goodnight, but Welch hesitated.

  “Say you know, if the lady comes down as hard against my idea as you think she might, maybe we could work out another deal of some kind.”

  “What kind?”

  “Well, an alternative. I’d really like to be able to tape the lady herself, no mistake about that. But if she says no, I’d like to try for second best. Maybe she’d be willing to give some sort of statement through a friend or spokesman or somebody. Somebody she trusts. Does she have a best friend, or relative, somebody she’s really tight with?”

  “I don’t know who her friends are. About the only relative she has is a niece, up visiting from Carmel. They’re pretty close.”

  “Up from Carmel, huh? She’s here now you mean?”

  “Yes. Like I said, this thing has put quite a strain on her aunt. The girl is up holding her hand for a few days.”

  “Huh. How old is the niece?”

  “I never asked. In her twenties, I’d say.”

  “She photogenic? I mean, well hell, you know what I mean. Is she a looker?”

  “She’s pretty cute.”

  “Well, let’s try that then, if the woman herself won’t appear on camera. Let’s try for the niece. What do you say?”

  “I’ll ask them and get back to you.”

  He gave a little wave and trotted across Bridgeway, climbed into an old VW van and took off down the street. I watched him drive off then got my own car and drove back home. I spent the next hour or so staring at the bedroom ceiling and wondering about Allison France.

  NINE

  I got to the Hall of Justice building in Santa Rosa a little before ten o’clock Tuesday morning. I lucked into a parking spot up the street and strode through the big central court area to the main entrance to the Sheriff’s Department. That’s as far as I got.

  The girl at the counter alerted Detective Sergeant Barry Smith, who showed up about ten seconds later. It looked like more bad news. His face was set in a grim expression. He came directly to me, took me by the arm without a word and guided me back out through the swinging glass door and into the big courtyard with the merrily splashing fountain. He looked around and led me over to a relatively secluded area, away from the lounging people killing time while waiting to do business with the Sonoma County courts or District Attorney’s office, Probation office or a dozen other facilities the building housed.

  “You’re to stay away from here today,” he told me.

  “What’s up?”

  Smith took a big breath of air and let it out slowly. “We’ve got a new ball game,” he said finally. “Late yesterday afternoon a London park ranger found a second body dump up there. Our people are getting pretty good at this by now. They figure there might be another half dozen bodies at the new site. That’s on top of the eight we’ve already found.”

  I winced. “Is the new site near the first one?”

  “I haven’t been up there, but they say not. It’s off a service road leading from the main parking lot down to the Wolf House ruins. But that isn’t the worst of it.”

  I waited for him to go on. Smith gave me a flinty look. “Technically, I’m not in charge of this thing any longer.”

  “But you’re top cop here.”

  “They don’t want a cop any longer. I will, of course, be working my butt off along with everybody else in the department, that’s not what I mean. But we routinely notified the state Department of Justice about the new find yesterday evening. Within the hour our sheriff had a call from the governor’s office. They’re putting a man from the Department of Justice in charge. He’s inside here now, a guy named Pershing. He’s had some law enforcement experience, but what he is most of all is a political aide and mouthpiece. Our strong law-and-order governor is gambling that we’re going to crack this thing. So instead of me doing it and the sheriff taking the credit, me and the others will do it but now the governor will take the credit.”

  “But if he’s just in a spokesman role…”

  “Pershing has made it very plain to us all, during the past two hours, that he is not here in the role of spokesman. He said he’s taking charge of the investigation. Period. He’s already told us to do a couple of things which aren’t exactly blunders, but they do show we’ll be going off in another half dozen directions in addition to the couple of dozen we’re already exploring because of the shotgun nature of this thing. I’m no longer at the stove switches. I’m in the oven.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh and look off in the distance. “I am really sorry to hear that, Sergeant.”

  “Yeah, well…I haven’t even told him about you and your psychic friend yet. I’m afraid he’d blow sky high. All he knows so far is that we had a tip to go looking
up there. And what that means is that you can’t come waltzing into the office whenever you feel like it and get an update.”

  “You will let me keep working it from my client’s end, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely. And keep in touch. I’ll keep you filled in the best I can. But for right now we have to do it like a couple of kids smoking out behind the barn.” He glanced across the courtyard. “I’ve got to be getting back.”

  “Two things, first.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’m anxious for my client to see the basic background information and photos of the victims in happier days that you’ve got so far. Can I still get that?”

  “It’s in the works. We’ll have those packages ready by midday. Where will you be?”

  “That’s the second thing. I’d like to go back up to the park and look at the new site. I want Robbins to know whatever I can tell her about it. Can you square that with whoever’s in charge up there?”

  “Yes. What did your lady say about going up there herself and poking around?”

  “She isn’t eager about it, but she said she’d be willing to do it once all the bodies are out of the ground. That was before we knew about this second site.”

  “They’re about finished below the piggery. The last body should be coming down off the hill this morning.”

  “Maybe I can get her up there today, if we can avoid the new site.”

  “Anything she could give us would be a help. Just let me know beforehand. I wouldn’t want you bumping into Pershing.”

  “Is he going to be up there?”

  “Just one time, if I read the man correctly. He’ll want to go up and get his picture taken. But when he does go up there I’m going to make a point that he also visit the latest dig so he can get a close-up look at some bodies. It’ll be his last visit, I’m sure. The rest of the time he’ll be down here bullying me and my people.”

  “Can’t your sheriff shield you from any of that?”

  “Some. He already has. But the sheriff is an elected official and half politician himself. There are limits to what he can do with a governor’s aide.”

  “Barry!”

  The sergeant and I both turned. It was Detective Rachel Goodwin, and she looked as if smoke was about to come out of her ears.