by Jack Lynch
“Why? Do you think it’s important?”
“Thurber will think so.”
I tried again to phone Maribeth, but there still was no answer. I was beginning to feel nervous about Bobbie. I wanted her off the street. I wanted her back in Maribeth’s apartment. I called into the office and asked Sharon to keep trying to reach Maribeth, and told her why, then got in my car and drove east.
Several things tumbled around in my head. One was the phone call from the fellow who had told me about the conversation he’d had with another man at a bar in the Marina District. He said the man had talked about killing and lingering grief. It might fit. The man could have been talking about killing not the people he considered his enemies, but those people close to them. And I thought about the man who had phoned Karen Ellis one night, trying to sell her a life insurance policy, or pretending to. Presenting her a hypothetical case. If she did buy a policy, who would the beneficiary be? Not a bad way to determine who somebody felt close to.
And now there was another man. The same man? Somebody who visited the Horse Around Ranch posing as an insurance syndicate representative, asking the sort of questions a man bent on a series of revenge killings might ask.
At the crossroads village of Freestone I pulled off the highway and used another pay phone to call Karen Ellis at her agency in the city. I wished now I had a cell phone, but when I had tried one I too often found myself in a dead zone or afraid of snoopers listening in over the airwaves.
“Your Sharon, she is wonderful!” Karen cried when she came on the line.
“She was able to help you?”
“Very much.”
“That’s good. Listen, I don’t have much time right now, but tell me, did the man who called you about taking out a life insurance policy try to use the fire they had at the ranch where you stayed as a selling point?”
“What fire? What ranch?”
“The ranch you stayed at near Bodega Bay. Where the stables burned that weekend.”
“But I told you, I was there only Friday night and during the day Saturday. There was no fire.”
“It happened Saturday night. You had to go back and get your things Sunday, you told me. Somebody must have talked about the fire.”
“But I did not speak to anybody then. I did not go into the lodge. I was giddy with love that Sunday, you must remember. I just ran into my cabin and packed and ran back out to my lovely man.”
I thanked her and continued east, along the Bodega Highway leading to the town of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa beyond. At Sebastopol I pulled over to the side of the road again and called the office to ask Sharon if she had gotten in touch with Maribeth yet.
“No, I was just about to try again.”
“Don’t bother now. I’ll try getting her myself.”
“Bragg?” There was something in Sharon’s tone.
“What is it?”
“Allison called.”
“Go on.”
“She said she had been trying to reach you all morning.”
“And?”
“She’s taking a vacation. She said a friend had convinced her she should go away somewhere and try to get things straightened out in her head. She didn’t explain any further. I don’t know what her problem was.”
“I do.” Sharon and Allison had always gotten along well. Whenever she was relaying a message from Allison, Sharon’s voice usually took on the mood in which Allison had delivered it. Sharon’s voice this time conveyed a note of deadness that made me hunch my shoulders. “Did she say where she was going?”
“Hawaii.”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t exactly across the street and down the block.
“She said she has a woman friend who teaches at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu,” Sharon continued. “She said she’ll be staying with her. She’s leaving on a flight out of San Francisco International later this afternoon. She thought maybe the two of you could meet near the United boarding area.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the seat. “I guess from the tone of your voice, Sharon, that what she had in mind wasn’t just a friendly bon voyage drink together.”
“No, she didn’t say that. She said if you got there early enough maybe the two of you could have a talk before she took off. She said it could help her make up her mind about things while she was out in Hawaii. I don’t like the sound of all this, Bragg. What’s going on between you two?”
“I can’t go into it right now. Did she say anything else?”
“She said that if you couldn’t make it to the airport before she left, she would take it that it was just kismet.”
“Kismet.”
“That’s what she said. You know what kismet means, don’t you, Bragg?”
“I know, but I can’t do anything about it right now. If she calls back tell her I’ll try my best, but I can’t promise. When does her flight leave?”
“She said a little before six o’clock, if it’s on time.”
I thanked her and disconnected, feeling a little dazed, as if somebody had just tapped me alongside the head with a pipe wrench. I tried Maribeth’s number again. This time she answered.
“Maribeth, this is Bragg. Have you heard from Bobbie?”
“Yes, about ten minutes ago.”
“Where is she?”
“The town of Sonoma. She said they had just finished a picnic of wine and cheese and sourdough bread in the town square. Sounds to me more as if they were having a date than doing an interview.”
“Had Welch taped his interview yet?”
“No.”
“If she phones again tell her it’s important to get right back to your place, on the double.”
“Why? What is it?”
“I can’t take the time right now. But tell her it’s really important that she get right back there.”
“All right.”
“Maribeth, you were at the Horse Around Ranch near Bodega Bay last December, just before Christmas.”
“Yes, I was. Did I tell you about that?”
“No, but I just learned of it. You were there when the stables burned.”
“That’s right. A ghastly thing. A man and a boy died there. Horses were killed as well.”
“I know. Did anybody ever get in touch with you after that, asking you about the water conservation policies up there?”
“What a strange question. No, they didn’t.”
“Did you know what caused the fire? About the water being diverted and the pump at the stables shorting out?”
“Of course I knew. I did some stringer work on that for the paper in Santa Rosa.”
“You did? There was nothing in the clips you showed me about it.”
“Oh, I didn’t actually write the piece. I just phoned in information. I’ve done that once or twice since my newspaper days. They even put my byline on the story, though it didn’t read the way I would have written it. Whoever took it on rewrite made it all seem so much more lurid than it was, describing wild-eyed horses with lathery hides galloping out into the night trying to escape the flames. That sort of thing.”
“Did you have the names of the victims in the story?”
“Yes.”
“Would you remember what they were now? The man victim was a Jim Stuart. Do you remember the boy’s name?”
“No, I don’t. Is it important?”
“Maybe. Just be sure to tell Bobbie what I said.”
“Of course.”
I disconnected and called the sheriff’s office in Santa Rosa. It was only a few miles away, but I didn’t want to take the time right then to drive over there. Barry Smith wasn’t available. Rachel Goodwin was.
“I understand you’re to be congratulated,” she told me.
“Have you been briefed on everything?”
“Pretty much so. Smitty gave us all a rundown on it. He’s in conference with the sheriff right now. What are you up to?”
“I’m in Sebastopol. I’m going on up to Jack London State
Park.”
“What’s new up there, dare I ask?”
“Nothing, I hope. Cliff Welch is shooting an interview with Maribeth’s niece somewhere. The two of them just picnicked in the town of Sonoma. The park’s nearby. Seems like a likely spot for Welch to shoot his tape, is all.”
“So?”
“So it turns out Maribeth was one of the people staying at that ranch when they had the fire. And if people close to the ones who were staying at the ranch that weekend are the ones being blown away…”
“Bobbie, of course,” Rachel finished. “Well, at least she’s with Cliff. He’s a pain in the butt at times, but he’s a good man.”
“I hope so. Another thing I’ve learned. Maribeth said she fed information on the fire to the Press Democrat. I think the sergeant wanted to learn the name of the boy who died in the ranch fire. Maribeth said she’s sure she gave the newspaper names of the victims. Smitty could probably call the paper and have them look up the story for him.”
“Good idea. I’ll call them myself, and have the information for him when he gets out of conference. God, it’s funny the coincidences that crop up in all this.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, Maribeth being the one helping us find the bodies. Now the ranch fire playing a role in it. Maribeth doing a story on the fire. All this new tragedy and Cliff Welch covering it, and the suffering he’s been through.”
“Suffering?”
“Yeah, his own wife committed suicide not long ago. At least that’s what one of the other newsies told me.”
I felt my stomach roll over. “Do you know what was behind that, Rachel?”
“No. It’s not the sort of thing you ask somebody about. Poor guy.”
“Oh, God.”
“Bragg?”
“Rachel, do me a big favor. Call the park right now and find out if Bobbie and Welch are there. If they are, tell the rangers to get Bobbie back to park headquarters and wait for me there, even if they have to put cuffs on her.”
“Hey, friend, you’re not thinking…Oh yes, you are.”
“Just phone them, Rachel.”
“This second.” She disconnected.
I got the holstered .38 out of the traveling bag, put it on the seat beside me and took off.
TWENTY-THREE
Awoman ranger was on duty at the entry gate to Jack London State Park. She was apologetic about everything under the sun. With his press credentials Welch had talked his way into the park an hour earlier. Bobbie had been with him. The call from the sheriff’s office had come in about thirty minutes later, but the park people didn’t have enough manpower on duty to have conducted a search for the two.
“We’ve been down-scheduled since the park was closed,” the ranger said. “There’s just me and my boss here now. He’s been out searching since we got the call from the sheriff.”
“Davenport?”
“That’s right, sir.”
She had one of the hand portable radios with her in the little gate house. She spoke briefly, then listened over a flash of static.
“He’s just in the upper parking lot,” she told me. “He’ll be right down.”
I drove in to where the road from the upper parking area intersected with the entrance road. Ranger Pat Davenport came cantering down the blacktop. I hadn’t expected him to be on horseback. I got out of the car. Davenport reined up on a mount that had been doing some sweating.
“Any sign of them?”
“No, not yet.”
The horse snorted and moved around some. I took a couple of paces backward. I didn’t know if the animal was mad or tired or raring to go again.
“Where have you looked?”
“Over by the first burial site, and up around the lake behind the old farm.”
“You haven’t been to the second burial site? Or the Wolf House?”
“Not yet. I was just going down in that direction now.”
“I’ll drive on ahead to the Wolf House,” I told him.
Davenport’s horse snorted a couple of times more and I got back into the car. I could hear a siren from somewhere down near Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon.
The service road to the Wolf House went past the second burial site before intersecting with the hiking path from the House of Happy Walls. The last time I had been down there Harvey Draper and the men with him had been recovering the bodies of the last victims. I slowed as I passed the site. Today it was just a sullen patch of earth.
The road circled to the left and entered an open area where a branch trail led up the wooded knoll containing the graves of Jack London and his wife Charmian. I slowed, staring up the trail. I had been up to their fenced graves once, in their shaded, noble setting.
I drove on up the road. It topped one last rise then dropped down the slope that contained the ruins of the Wolf House. I spotted Welch’s TV van below, parked in a clearing on the east side of the ruins near what was to have been the entrance to London’s grand home. I didn’t see any sign of the cameraman or Bobbie. I drove on down and parked next to the van. When I got out of the car I clipped the holster to my belt, left my sports jacket on the seat and checked out the van. Empty.
“Who’s out there, please?”
It was Welch’s voice, calling from somewhere inside the rock and concrete shell of the Wolf House itself. The site was surrounded on three sides by a low split-rail fence easy to clamber over. That must have been what Welch and Bobbie did, and now it was what I did. A new plywood and barbed-wire screen now covered the main entryway into the Wolf House directly in front of me, about midway down the east side of the structure. It hadn’t been there before; Welch’s work, I was sure. Around the corner on the lower south side were the wooden stairs leading up to the viewing platform at what would have been the building’s main floor level, but fencing there prevented entry into the ruins.
“I say who’s out there, please?”
The eastern walls of the home were pretty much intact. I couldn’t see inside, but it sounded as if Welch was calling from near the main entryway, just inside the barricade he must have erected.
“It’s Bragg, Welch. Do you have Bobbie in there with you?”
“Oh, yes. She’s right here.”
I started back up the east side slope to higher ground where I hoped to get a view of the Wolf House interior. “I’d like to talk to her,” I called. “Are you doing your interview there?”
“You might call it that,” Welch replied. “I don’t want you moving around, Mr. Bragg. I might as well tell you, I’m shooting some tape up here of your friend Miss Bobbie. But I also have a rifle with me. If you don’t do as I ask, I’m afraid I’ll have to put a bullet through her little heart.”
Adrenaline had driven me up the hill high enough to see it had no flooring, as such. It did have the tops of concrete walls rising up from below, which had once supported wooden flooring and now could serve as narrow emergency walkways. Some of the walls were of double thickness, offering safer footholds. And finally I saw Bobbie.
She was standing erect on the narrow shelf-like hearth of a fireplace and chimney on the outer wall opposite where Welch was. It wasn’t a safe spot. If she took a misstep she could drop 10 or 12 feet to the concrete slab in the basement. Her hands were behind her back, probably tied or handcuffed, and she was holding her face to the sky. She was standing unnaturally still.
“Bobbie? Are you all right?” I shouted.
She didn’t answer. Welch did.
“I am not fooling, Mr. Bragg. If you don’t want to be the cause of the young woman’s death, you had better do just as I say.”
“What is it you want?”
“Go back down around the house to the viewing platform on the other side. You’ll be able to better see what’s going on from there, and you can describe it to your friend Mrs. Robbins the next time you see her.”
“What has this to do with Maribeth?”
“Just do as you’re told, Mr. Bragg.”
I trotted back down and around to the lower side of the ruins, shifting the holster on my belt to the small of my back. I took the stairs to the wooden viewing platform two at a time. When I got to the top I still couldn’t see Welch. The cameraman was concealed between concrete entryway walls on both sides, but I did get a better view of Bobbie from there, one that made my stomach turn over.
A rope was knotted around her neck. The other end of it was tied overhead to one of the steel bracing bars supporting the walls and fireplaces from collapse.
Worse yet, Bobbie wasn’t standing on the fireplace shelf itself, she was standing atop a block of ice resting on the hearth. It was no wonder she wasn’t moving. The rope around her neck was taut. The knot in it was a crude one, but with any movement from Bobbie, or much more of the inevitable melting of the block of ice, she would choke to death. And if Welch was armed, as he said he was, I couldn’t think of a thing I could do about it.
Welch stepped partly around the corner of the entryway. He held a minicam to his shoulder with one hand and a rifle in the other. He smiled briefly at me then stepped back out of sight behind the concrete wall.
“You will have to tell your friend Maribeth about the elaborate care I took to set all this up,” he called out. “After all, she and that fireman, the one whose boy I killed, they played the major roles, as I see it, in everything that happened. Or rather, in the fireman’s case, he failed to play a major role. At one particular fire. Being a fireman, I told myself, he should have thought of some way to fight it. He should have prevented my own boy from dying in that fire.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was Welch’s son who had been killed by the horses and fire.
“Welch, it’s over with. We know all about that fire, at the ranch over by Bodega Bay.”
“Do you now? That was fast work. How did you ever get onto that?”
“Never mind how we got onto it. You’ve done enough. Let me untie the girl and get her down from there.”
“Oh, no. No, no. We have to finish things up smooth here. This will be the end of it. Then you can all go on back about your business.”
Ranger Davenport must have arrived and seen and heard enough to get a rough idea of what was taking place. There was a sound of straining hooves from in front, and a moment later I could see Davenport through a window casing in the far wall beating back up the road in the direction of park headquarters.