Die For Me

by Jack Lynch

  “Is there no way out of this?” she demanded. “That man is the biggest cow pie I have ever run into. You won’t believe what he wants Thurber and me to do now.”

  “Relax, Rachel. He can’t give any of you a direct order. It has to come through me.” He turned back to me. “I have to get inside. I’ll have somebody meet you at the site with the information you want.”

  “Thanks. One last question. How many people in your department know the name of my client?”

  He frowned. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think I told anybody. I mentioned a woman psychic, but I don’t think I gave her name to anybody. Rachel, did I tell you and Thurber?”

  The angry woman detective gave a curt shake of her head.

  “Not even the sheriff?” I asked.

  “No. I mentioned her background. I did check her out with the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department after you told me she had done some work down there.”

  “Or might you have mentioned where she lived?”

  “No, I’m sure I didn’t. Got to run. Come on, Rachel.”

  I watched them go back inside. Smith had one hand on the woman’s shoulder, trying to calm her.

  The ranger at the gate to Jack London State Park called somebody on his radio then waved me on through. I drove to the upper parking lot and got out to walk up through the picnic area then down to the original burial site. As Smith had predicted the last body had been taken from the ground there, but the area still made you want to hunch your shoulders.

  Hillocks and mounds of loose earth extended across an area of 40 feet square. A pair of deputy sheriffs were disassembling a wooden stand with a detachable screen box they had used to sift the earth in the area for telltale signs of who had brought the bodies to that scraggly patch of earth. A pair of park rangers were surveying the area, making plans to return it to its original configuration, to plant it with wildgrass and thistles and try to restore it to what it had been, as if such a thing were possible.

  The press area had been moved from near the London cottage to the lower parking lot adjacent to the House of Happy Walls. The press contingent had grown from the dozen or so TV and newspaper people who had been there the first day to thirty or more, some of them representing foreign media. Clifford Welch’s VW van was there, but I didn’t see him in the immediate area.

  A pair of deputies were preparing to escort the press people in small groups down to the new grave area so they could shoot their film and tape and write stark words on small notepads. It was a grisly story. I didn’t look forward to hiking down to the new site, but for right then I had to be Maribeth’s eyes and ears.

  A length of yellow tape had been strung across the entrance to the service road that led to where the bodies were. I showed my ID to the deputy stationed there. He consulted a clipboard and passed me on through. Small birds were twittering around in the oak and madrone trees on either side, and sunlight filtered through the overhead branches and dappled the blacktop road. I took my time walking down it.

  The new site was about 30 feet in from the road. I didn’t leave the blacktop. Deputies in khaki coveralls were performing the same grim tasks they had performed on the other side of the park entrance.

  Harvey Draper, the owlish-looking forensic anthropologist, was stooped down, letting a handful of earth sift through his fingers. He stood again, wiping his hand on a towel, looked up and saw me. He said something to the others and walked slowly out to the road.

  Neither of us said anything for a moment. We just stared at the new site. A pair of deputies were opening out a body bag.

  “You learn to detach yourself from all this,” Harvey said finally. “But I had heard it still can catch up with you sometimes.” He paused for several moments more. “Now I know what they were talking about.”

  He continued to stare at the new, freshly disturbed patch of earth that held more bodies, then took a deep breath and turned toward me.

  “The first person we unearthed early this morning was another youngster. Not as young as the boy from the other side, but a girl of about sixteen. She was a pretty little thing. Hadn’t been out here for long. She and the boy bother me. They deserved more of a chance at life.”

  He hesitated a moment. “She was shot between the eyes. I would like it if you didn’t tell anybody that, not now at least. It might hurt her parents even more than what they’ll be feeling anyhow.”

  I nodded slowly.

  Harvey also nodded and made his way back into the burial ground. When a deputy with the packet of information Smith had promised me showed up, I thanked the man and drove back to San Francisco.

  TEN

  “No…No…No…”

  Maribeth was on the white sofa, studying the photos of seven of the first eight victims whose bodies had been removed from Jack London State Park. She was hunched over the coffee table and would study a photograph closely before declaring she didn’t remember ever having seen the person. When she was through studying the photos she pored over the accompanying sheets of information Smith had provided about the victims. I had already been through them. None of them rang any bells.

  Nurse Michelle Sykes had moved to San Francisco a half dozen years earlier after completing her training at a hospital in Chicago. She and another nurse had lived together at a duplex out in the Sunset District. She occasionally would date one or another doctor from San Francisco General, according to her roommate, but she had been more interested in her profession than planning a domestic life. She recently had been taking more courses at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, with a view to becoming a nurse practitioner, a level between registered nurse and doctor. Her roommate said Sykes already knew more than most doctors.

  John Clarke, the CPA from Redwood City, had built himself a new career years earlier by devising computer programs for other accountants. He was author of one software program and had contributed to several others. He maintained only a handful of accounting clients these days, devoting most of his time to instructing other CPAs in the use of his computer program. His wife said it kept him on the road a good bit of the time. From what investigators had learned so far Clarke was popular with his business associates, and his wife couldn’t think of any reason for anybody wanting to kill him.

  There wasn’t much information in Smith’s report on Donald McGuire. A twelve-year-old boy hasn’t really been around long enough to leave much of a dossier. He had lived in Santa Rosa with his parents and was an average student. He wasn’t a troublemaker but was said to have had a wanderlust about him and thought nothing of staying overnight with friends when he got sleepy without calling home first. His parents didn’t like it, but they were used to his habits.

  Doris Hadley, the thirty-two-year-old travel agent from Mill Valley, was a swinger. She worked hard and played hard and Smith had told me it would take his investigators a good long while before they would be able to interview all the men she had been dating during just the past six months. This information came from a somewhat older and slightly jealous woman who worked at the same travel agency.

  Hadley had lived alone in a condominium on a hill not far from where she worked, though her neighbors indicated that living alone was a relative term in the woman’s case. She had male company most nights.

  Lionel Mapes, the twenty-nine-year-old San Francisco waiter, was a fellow from the other side of the coin. He was the homosexual and investigators learned that at one time he had feared he had AIDS and had sought treatment at San Francisco General Hospital, where nurse Sykes worked. But so far as could be determined, the two had never met each other.

  There was more information available to do with Diogenes “Dizzy” Holmes than any of the other victims, because he had been under the scrutiny of law enforcement personnel in the past. The cursory investigation conducted since his body had been found didn’t disclose any scheme out of the ordinary which might have led to his death, but until the killings were solved, if ever they should be, Holmes’ activiti
es would get a closer look than those of the other victims, because no matter how old and creaky might be the ruse of slaying several persons to mask one planned death, it still threw police off their stride and sometimes worked, at least in the beginning.

  Investigators had little information so far on the last two victims found near the piggery. The half-nude woman with blood spatters on her chest had been identified as a thirty-two-year-old San Francisco woman named Nancy Dobbs. They had learned she was co-owner of a modeling agency in the city.

  The final body removed just that morning was identified as a Carl William James, forty-one. That was all anybody knew about him this early in the going. He had carried a wallet with an expired driver’s license issued by the state of Missouri. He also had credit cards which would yield more information when investigators had a chance to get around to him.

  All of the victims had disappeared during the past twelve weeks. So far no common links had been found between any two of them.

  “These people are all strangers to me,” Maribeth declared, putting down the last report.

  Bobbie had come into the room while Maribeth had been reading the reports. She sat in a chair near the sofa, sipping a cup of tea. She had offered to fetch some for Maribeth or me, but we both had declined. Bobbie was watching her aunt closely.

  I went over to look out a window and tried to think of things nobody else might have thought of. I felt like I was treading water.

  “Any of them from the Carmel area?” Bobbie asked.

  “Not that they’ve found so far,” her aunt told her. Maribeth frowned over the coffee table for a moment, then abruptly shifted her position and began gathering up the photos. “Just wait a minute,” she murmured.

  I crossed the room. “What is it?”

  “Maybe nothing. But I’ve had something like this work before when I’ve been given photos of a missing person. Many times it hasn’t worked, but it’s worth a try. I’m taking these into the back room for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  She left the room.

  Bobbie put down her mug of tea on a stand beside her chair and slumped. “Jesus, this is becoming really depressing. And you say they’re finding more bodies?”

  “I’m afraid so. At a new site. The first new victim they recovered was a teenage girl.”

  “How gross. I hope it was quick for her.”

  I didn’t reply to that. “Bobbie, how are you holding up?”

  She shook her head and went back to her tea. “Oh, I’m all right. But I’m really depressed at what this is doing to Aunt Maribeth. I wish she had somebody else she was close to. A man in her life, maybe. There’s only so much support another woman can give in something as crazy as this is. A man—well, there are ways somebody of the opposite sex can take a person’s mind off things for a while.”

  “Are you free this afternoon?”

  She managed a brief smile. “Why, Mr. Bragg, are you looking for somebody to take your mind off things?”

  “I wish I had the time for it. No, I want your aunt to go up to the park with me. She didn’t want to while they were removing the bodies, but now there’s no telling when that might be. The sheriff’s detective leading the investigation is anxious for her to visit up there. We wouldn’t have to go near the new spot where they’re digging. But maybe if she could see the original site and just walk the grounds, who knows what might come of it? And while I’m a man, I’m not anybody in her life, not that way. I’m afraid you’re the only person she can really lean on if things take a bad turn.”

  “That’s okay, I don’t mind. I’m ready to do anything that’ll get this behind us.” She broke into another smile. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like somebody to take your mind off things? I think if we’re all going up to poke around where they’ve been digging up bodies, by this evening I for one certainly will be in a mood to have somebody take my mind off things.”

  I forced a smile, my thoughts suddenly roaring up to Barracks Cove and Allison France. “Let’s see how things go with your aunt.”

  When Maribeth returned she dropped the victims’ photos on the coffee table and shook her head. “Absolutely nothing. Maybe I’m losing the gift. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of those people before, let alone had a conversation with them.”

  So I brought Maribeth up to date on what had been happening that morning at the state park, then asked if she would be willing to visit the first burial site. She didn’t greatly like the idea, but as with her niece, she was ready to do almost anything necessary to put this episode behind her.

  I phoned Smith and told him of our plans.

  “That, at least, is good news,” Smith told me. “I’ll have somebody meet you there. In fact, Detective Goodwin says the two of you seem to get along.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good. If she stays around here she and Pershing are going to have a shootout. That happens sometimes. So from now on whenever you’re up to something that I think calls for a departmental presence, I’d like her to be the shadow. She can meet you at the park.”

  During the drive up north I told Maribeth and Bobbie a little bit about Detective Rachel Goodwin. I explained some of the problems a woman still has these days as part of a mostly male, paramilitary force, and how it can make a person sensitive about a lot of things. Maribeth seemed genuinely concerned. Bobbie, who made her living at a trade that from time to time called for her to deal with a bunch of drunks, had a different viewpoint. It was pretty predictable how things would go when the three women met.

  Detective Goodwin was in a car waiting for us at the park gate and drove ahead of us to the upper parking lot. When I introduced Goodwin and Maribeth, the two women sized each other up for about three seconds and then smiled as if they liked what they saw. Bobbie smiled sweetly when I introduced her, but the look around her eyes was catty and it wasn’t something that escaped the woman detective.

  “I thought only Ms. Robbins would be with you,” Rachel told me.

  “Bobbie’s my moral support,” Maribeth said quietly. “I really don’t think I could do this without her.”

  Rachel shrugged and the four of us went up through the picnic area and took the trail down toward the piggery. We didn’t talk much. Maribeth was looking around as if it were all brand new to her. We walked to where the road curved below the little rise and hollow beyond it where the bodies had been found.

  “I don’t have to go up there, do I?” Maribeth asked.

  “Of course not,” Rachel told her. “Do you recognize the place?”

  “Sure. I’ve seen it on the news.”

  “I mean, from before. Whatever it was you saw that got us all out here in the first place.”

  “No,” Maribeth told her. “It wasn’t all torn up like this.” She turned to me then. “There’s nothing here for me. What do we do next?”

  I looked at Rachel.

  “Why don’t we go on back to the London cottage,” the detective suggested. “We think whoever did it had to come down this road. I don’t know how you do whatever it is you do, Ms. Robbins…”

  “Call me Maribeth, and I’ll call you Rachel.”

  “Fine, Maribeth. My boss said to just let you wander through the area. Ask you to let us know about anything that triggers a reaction.”

  “All right. Just so I don’t have to go down…” She squeezed shut her eyes briefly, as if warding off pain. “Down where they’re working now.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Jesus,” said Bobbie. “Is there a bar around here somewhere?” She didn’t expect a reply and nobody gave her one.

  We walked back up the road past the stone ruins of the old Kohler & Frohling winery that used to occupy the site before London bought it in 1911. Beyond that was the cottage where London had lived and worked, waiting for the Wolf House to be constructed on a hillside half a mile away. Maribeth walked aimlessly around the small cottage with the rest of us trailing in her wake. She paused in front of the building,
staring up at the glassed-in porch to the right of the front door, where London had died. Maribeth finally turned with a heave of her shoulders.

  “What next? ” she asked.

  “How about if I drive us all down to the bottom of the other parking lot?” Rachel suggested. “We can avoid any media people down there that way. Then I’d like you to take a walk down the trail to the Wolf House ruins. There won’t be anybody else down there now. You can just sniff the air and think your thoughts and see if anything occurs to you.”

  Maribeth nodded with resignation. I think she considered it by now to be pretty hopeless. I didn’t think she suspected what I suspected, that Rachel was hoping she might sense any other burying places on the park grounds.

  Nothing brought a response from Maribeth until we reached the stone ruins of the Wolf House itself. It still was an impressive edifice, even in its shell-like state. Boulders of maroon lava were used to form much of the outer walls and some of the inner arches and transverse walls. Other double-thick walls of concrete still stood, and fireplace chimneys rose on three walls of the structure. Second-story fireplaces looked denuded, their hearths jutting out where once they had abutted floors. Now they just provided a ledge with a drop off of a dozen feet or more to the concrete floor of the basement. Steel beams had in recent years been anchored to the stone interior passageways of the structure and rose at an angle to brace the tall chimneys rising lonely into the sky.

  Maribeth was plainly impressed by the ruins. We followed her around to the south side of the building where wooden stairs at either end of the exterior wall led up to a viewing platform. She climbed the stairs slowly, staring intently at the ruins above. Rachel and I exchanged glances.

  Up on the platform Maribeth walked slowly to the center of the viewing deck and stared through the large mesh wire fencing into the ruins. She stood quite still for several moments, then turned to us, blinking her eyes.

  “Something’s wrong,” she told us. She turned back toward the ruins again, her eyes making a slow circuit of the walls and chimneys and naked fireplaces, the long concrete basin just beyond the fence that was designed to be a second-story outdoor reflecting pool between two wings of the house. She shook her head, then closed her eyes and rubbed her temples as if she had a headache.