“This is fighting criminals? If I wanted to chase around in airplanes I would have joined the air force.”
The plane swayed along, rolling toward the terminal building. It angled in beside a parked F-27 turboprop and came to a stop. The pilot raced the turbines a moment and then cut the power, leaving a welcome silence. Dondero took a deep breath and unbuckled himself. He followed the copilot toward the exit hatch while Reardon came behind. Dondero turned his head.
“This trip had better be necessary, is all I can say.”
“‘There are none so blind as those who will not see,’” Reardon quoted with a smile. “You’re beginning to sound like Captain Tower.”
“I’m beginning to think like Captain Tower, too,” Dondero said shortly. “I’m beginning to think you got these four guys on the brain. I’ll give you Mullin, but my guess is the other three had nothing to do with it. I know I doubt like hell that that guy Gilchrist was mixed up in it.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Reardon said with a grin and followed the others from the plane. He waited for the pilot to join them. “Look,” Reardon said, “I have no idea of when we’ll be back—”
“No problem,” the pilot said cheerfully. “It’s your nickel. We’ll sack in someplace. Whenever you’re ready to go back, just check with the tower. We’ll let them know where we are.”
“Yeah,” Dondero said under his breath. “Check with the Tower. That’s what we should have done before we left.”
Reardon didn’t bother to comment. He nodded his agreement to the pilot and led the way toward the terminal building. A long, black limousine cut away from its position near the gate and rolled toward them. As it approached both men could see the sheriff’s insignia on the door. They stopped and let the car pull up beside them. The door on the far side came open and the big man seated next to the driver eased himself out and tramped around the radiator to face them. He was large in all directions, with a weathered face that came from years in the sun; his whipcords were worn and his ten-gallon hat had seen years of service. His face might have been good-natured under other circumstances, but at the moment he was frowning at them blackly.
“Are you the two from San Francisco?”
Reardon was surprised by the obvious dislike in the other’s face, but he put it down to resentment at having been called out at that early hour.
“That’s right. I’m Lieutenant Reardon of San Francisco Homicide. This is Detective Dondero.”
“Would you mind showing us some identification?”
Reardon’s surprise increased, but he opened his wallet to his warrant card; his badge was pinned opposite it. Sheriff Robinson took the wallet and checked it thoroughly before returning it and then repeated the examination with Dondero’s. His face showed nothing but hostility. Several airport employees paused in their labors, sure they were about to see an arrest, Dondero was not pleased with the sheriff’s attitude.
“Look,” he said. “Does this town happen to have a restaurant? I can handle these things better on a full stomach.”
The sheriff studied him a moment and then turned and walked into the terminal building; Reardon and Dondero followed. They crossed the tiled floor of the deserted building after the sheriff and entered the small restaurant in one corner. Robinson had already seated himself in a booth; the two slid in across from him. The sheriff took off his large hat on the rack beside the table, and then turned back.
“I don’t like coincidences,” he said flatly.
Reardon was beginning to get irked with the reception. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. I don’t like coincidences.” He looked at them steadily. “And before you say anything else, I’d just like to remind you that you don’t have any jurisdiction in this state and damn-all in this county. Do you understand?”
Dondero cut in. “I thought we came in here to eat.”
Reardon paid him no attention. “Look, Sheriff, I haven’t the faintest idea of what’s bugging you. We came here asking for your co-operation, and if we don’t get it we’ll just have to go higher up the ladder, but we came here to get some answers to some questions, and we intend to get them. One way or another.”
Robinson looked at him coldly. “Don’t take that tone with me, Sonny. Yesterday you sent me some telexes asking a lot of damn-fool questions about Max Glass. I answered and asked you what it was all about, but you didn’t have the common courtesy to answer, except to order me to meet you, so don’t talk to me about co-operation. Now, before we go any further, suppose you tell me why you’re so damned nosy about Max Glass?”
Dondero said hopelessly, “Suppose before any of this, we at least order coffee?”
Reardon was staring at the sheriff’s hard face. Was this red-neck angry simply because his feelings were hurt?
“All right, Sheriff,” he said. “Maybe I should have answered your telex, but I thought it would be quicker to come out myself. Thursday afternoon there was a bank robbery in San Francisco. It was done by four men using a black Chevy. They stole a quarter-of-a-million-dollar payroll and killed a policeman. We happen to have good reason to suspect that Max Glass was the one who drove the getaway car.”
For a moment the sheriff just stared, the anger slowly clearing from his face. Then he slowly shook his head. “You’ve got to be crazy,” he said, his tone almost wondering. “You’ve got to be out of your mind.”
“I don’t think so,” Reardon said stubbornly. “And before you tell me what a solid citizen Glass was, I already know it. The others involved were also solid citizens. And don’t ask me why a man like that, or men like that, would rob a bank, because I don’t know. Yet. Now, let’s get down to cases—do you know where Glass was last Thursday afternoon?”
“He was hunting, like I told you, but—”
“Did anybody see him? Where was he hunting? In fact, a better question would be, where is he right now?”
There was a moment of silence while Dondero tried to catch the eye of the lone waitress, but it was plain that only a signal from the sheriff would get them service. Then the sheriff sighed. His earlier antipathy had strangely disappeared.
“He’s in the morgue here in town,” he said quietly. “Him and another fellow.”
“What!”
The sheriff said in the same quiet tone, “That’s what I meant by coincidence. First you ask a lot of questions about Max, when he’s never been in trouble before in his life, and the next thing he’s dead. I figure there has to be some sort of a connection. I figure you can tell me what it is.”
“When did he die? How? And where?”
“Max had a hunting camp up in the Kaibab Forest. Well, early this morning, somebody set fire to it while him and this other guy were sleeping,” Robinson said grimly. “A car passing on the road below saw the smoke and notified the rangers; they don’t always pick up smoke from the station too well at night. Anyway, by the time they got over there, it was all over. Max and the man with him were goners.” He looked at Reardon somberly. “The rangers just brought them down here less than an hour ago.”
So that was what had upset the big sheriff! With reason, Reardon thought. “How sure are you of the identification? I mean, how badly were the bodies burned?”
“They were burned bad enough, all right,” Robinson said distastefully, “but there’s no doubt about the identification. Their faces were only scorched, puffed up from the heat, but not bad, and the doctor says they undoubtedly died of smoke inhalation, but the rest of them—” He made a face.
“What about the other man? His identification?”
“Max’s wife said he was an old friend of Max’s, and that his name was Al Grube and that he came from Torrington, Connecticut. We sent out his fingerprints and a picture just before I came down to the airport to meet you. If we had an answer my driver would have come in and told me.”
Reardon shook his head. “Damn!” He looked across the table. “Are you doing an autopsy?”
Some of the antipath
y returned to the weathered face. “Why would we mess a man about any more than he already is? We know how he died. He wasn’t poisoned, or any of those wild ideas you big-city cops get.”
“My wild idea right now is that the two of them were shot,” Reardon said quietly. “Before their cabin was set afire. Whoever set that fire wouldn’t take the chance they might get out.”
Dondero said: “Unless the fire was accidental.”
“It wasn’t,” Robinson said heavily. “Ranger said the place stunk of kerosene. It was arson, all right.” He thought a moment and got to his feet. “Be right back,” he said, and tramped from the restaurant.
Dondero sighed with relief and reached for a menu. “At last!” he said, and signaled for the waitress. The girl came over hesitantly, as if wondering why the sheriff would leave two such obviously desperate criminals at large. Dondero, reading her mind, grinned. He said: “It’s the Honor System. Anyway, the condemned man is always given a hearty breakfast. I’ll have the Hearty Breakfast Number 3.”
“Just coffee and toast,” Reardon said, and looked up as the sheriff came back.
Robinson slid into the booth across from them and nodded abruptly. “We’ll do an autopsy on them,” he said, “but it would still be murder either way—arson or shooting.”
“Except the bullets might match up with something,” Reardon said, and then remembered the Saturday-night specials. His spirits dropped at the thought of trying to trace a bullet from one of those guns, and then they picked up. “They might even match the ones we took out of Wheaton. He was the cop who was shot.”
“Scarcely,” Dondero said. “We have that gun, remember? From the bay.”
Reardon sighed. “I forgot. Still, I’d like those bullets.” He looked at the sheriff. “One more thing, Sheriff. Either Glass or the man with him in the cabin—I’m pretty sure you’ll find he’s Albert Grube, all right—were in Florida sometime yesterday afternoon—”
“Florida?”
“That’s right. One of them—”
“But that’s impossible!”
“It’s possible, all right,” Reardon said with assurance. “We’ve checked plane schedules. They—or he—could have left Orlando at six o’clock Florida time and changed planes at New Orleans. They could have reached either Phoenix or Flagstaff—” He paused. “Which is closer?”
“His camp was outside Pine Springs, maybe an hour at the most from Flagstaff, but—”
“Then it was definitely possible,” Reardon said with satisfaction. “It had to be a tight schedule, but it could be done and it was done. Maybe a check on planes or rented cars—” He paused a second, thinking. “Although he wouldn’t need a rented car if the other man met him—”
Sheriff Robinson shook his head. “You don’t understand, Lieutenant. The ranger who brought the bodies down was saying what a pity it was—he’d seen the two of them only that afternoon in Pine Springs, getting supplies.”
Reardon frowned. He was about to say something when the waitress came over and began putting down food, including a cup of coffee for the sheriff. Reardon waited until she had finished and left before saying anything. Then he said flatly, “It’s impossible.”
Dondero broke his eggs and dropped broken pieces of toast into the resulting mess. He took his fork and poked around, finally bringing up one egg-soaked bit for consumption.
“It isn’t impossible,” he said, chewing. “Maybe Captain Tower was right. Maybe you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“No!” Reardon said, and hit the table with his fist. The dishes jumped. “No! The ranger said they were getting supplies—why? If they’d been camping since—” He looked at Robinson. “When was Glass supposed to have left on this hunting trip?”
“Tuesday,” Robinson said. “Why?”
“And they were buying supplies on Friday? You’ve been on hunting trips, Sheriff, and so have I. You pack in what you need for your stay; you don’t run out in less than three days. The fact is, they hadn’t been at that camp at all; they were just arriving there. That’s why they were buying supplies. And if they weren’t at that camp, where were they? I’ll tell you: they were robbing a bank in San Francisco!”
“And if they were seen in Pine Springs yesterday afternoon,” Dondero said, spearing another soggy bit, “they couldn’t have been in Florida at the same time. Either one of them.”
Robinson said slowly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I can try and find out if anybody might have seen them from the time they left here on Tuesday.”
“You won’t,” Reardon said confidently. He leaned across the table. “Look, Sheriff, I’ll put it to you. During the robbery, the TV camera in the bank kept taking pictures. We saw them, and they looked to all of us just like a military maneuver, a group of four men who had obviously worked together before. That TV tape also had sound, and we took voice-graphs from the tapes and had our laboratory analyze them, feed them into the computer. The computer placed the men from different parts of the country, one most probably from the San Francisco area, one from the New England area, and one from the Florida area. I admit we have none from Glass, but he was outside in the car. Then we had a break and as a result we came up with the car and the body of one of them that Wheaton had shot before he died. He was the one from Florida. We further found that during the Vietnam war he had served in a gunship with three others and become very friendly with them. And those three were a man from California, a man from Torrington, Connecticut, and a man from here, named Max Glass.”
The sheriff remained silent, watching and listening.
“Now,” Reardon went on, “we find the man from Torrington and the man from here are both killed. Coincidence? Let me give you some more. The car they used was a year-old Chevy that had been in a bad wreck someplace and had been rebuilt by an expert. Max Glass has the facilities to handle a job like that without leaving a trace. More coincidence? I say, no.”
Robinson cleared his throat. “What’s all this about somebody being in Florida?”
“And that’s another thing. Somebody, yesterday afternoon, broke into the house of the man from Florida and burned whatever letters and pictures were there. I maintain it was done to hide any connection between the four of them.”
“It still sounds pretty circumstantial,” Robinson said, and pushed his empty coffee cup away. “I can’t believe that Max Glass was mixed up in anything like this. And even if you’re right, why would anyone want to kill him and this man Grube? If they were such close friends?”
“There was a quarter of a million dollars taken in that robbery,” Reardon said. “That could be plenty of motive. You know, when we pulled Mullin’s body from the bay—he was the one from Florida—I had the odd thought that it would be simple for us if they killed each other off for the other’s share, so we’d only have to be looking for one man, instead of three. And I think that’s where we are. And the last man on the totem pole is named Will Gilchrist, and he lives in our area.”
“Except he couldn’t have been in Florida,” Dondero said, “and he certainly couldn’t have been in Arizona early this morning, because he was at work. And if you can’t prove he did any of those things, your whole case falls apart.”
Reardon looked at him. “You’re saying that the fact that somebody just got through burning the cabin where two out of the four of my suspects were, is another coincidence? Anyway, Gilchrist didn’t have to do the job himself. He could have hired somebody.”
“And leave himself open for blackmail? That would be pretty stupid, don’t you think? For a guy you keep claiming is the brains?”
“Then, dammit, he did the jobs himself, and our job is to find out how!” Reardon said half-angrily, and came to his feet. He reached for the check, but the sheriff had it. Reardon thanked him and the three men walked out to the car. Reardon looked up at the weathered face and smiled.
“Sheriff, thanks for your co-operation. There’s nothing more we can do here with Glass and Grube dead, so
we’ll be going back. I’m sorry about not answering your telex, but I’m glad I came in person. It’s been nice meeting you.”
“Forget the apology,” Robinson said. “I guess I got a little hot, but Max Glass was a friend of mine.”
“And we’ll get the man who did it,” Reardon said. “Because I’m sure it all ties into that bank job.”
“Maybe,” Robinson said. “If Max was shot the way you think, I’ll see you get photographs of the markings. Our own troopers will want the bullets. And I still intend to try and find out if anyone saw either Max or his friend anywhere at all, either near his camp or anywhere else, on Thursday, because it’s still hard to believe he’d be mixed up in anything like that. Why would he?”
“I don’t know,” Reardon said soberly, and shook hands. “But I’ll bet you the best meal you can eat you won’t find a soul who saw either of those men at the time the robbery took place.”
“But not in that airport restaurant,” Dondero said, and also shook hands.
CHAPTER 14
Saturday—12:30 P.M.
Captain Tower listened patiently to the story of what had happened in Arizona. His only reaction at the report of the deaths of Glass and Grube was a tightening of his jaw, but he did not interrupt. When Reardon finally finished, the captain swung his chair around to look out of the window a few moments in thought; Reardon was wondering if the captain was considering the cost of the charter jet, equating it against the negative results of the trip. When Tower swung back, his face had a frown.
“Out of the original four men you suspected,” he said quietly, “you’re down to one. I admit it seems more than mere coincidence that, when you claim four men are involved in a crime, three of them are dead—and violently—within two days.” He shook his head, but not negatively; it was more as if he were wondering at the oddity. “The problem is that, if anything, you have less of a case now than you did before. The only one who has a fairly strong alibi, it seems to me, is this man Gilchrist. The one who is the lone survivor.”
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