All around him was chaos. Moans, yells, running steps, scrambling on the hardwood floor, the air choked with the stink of burned powder. An edge of the table dug into his back; somebody’s flailing elbow cracked the side of his jaw as he heaved up. The weight shifted off him. He kicked loose of the chair, corkscrewed his body around. One hand slicked through something wet and sticky as he dragged his knees under him and shoved, lurching, to his feet.
For a second or two his vision was cockeyed. When it cleared, he saw that the shooter was no longer in the game room. The running steps… he could still hear them in another part of the house. Heading for the front entrance? He ran that way, not looking back even when somebody yelled his name, the commotion made by the others diminishing behind him.
The front door stood wide open. He plunged outside. Powdery moonlight brightened the gravel turnaround, gleamed off the dark shapes of cars; nobody moved anywhere among them. The access drive and the road beyond were empty black stripes. Then his ears picked up rustlings, the snap and crackle of twigs being crushed: the gunman was somewhere in the woods that stretched along the lakeshore. Cape ran parallel to the house and the railed deck, across the far edge of the turnaround. Over there was a path angling away into the evergreens. Enough moonshine filtered down through the overhead branches to soften shadows, give him a sense of where he was going.
Sudden noise: engine starting up somewhere ahead.
He couldn’t move any faster in the darkness. Twice he almost blundered into the boles of trees. A narrow little inlet materialized on his right, then a wooded finger of land. Beyond the finger the engine noise rose, steadied, began to thread away. Boat of some kind leaving the shore.
He stumbled on until the hard yellow-and-black gleam of the lake appeared again. Another inlet, a circlet of mud-and-sand beach fringed with mashed-down ferns and scrub, a furrow in the damp earth to show where the boat had been drawn up out of the water. And out on the lake, a couple of hundred yards distant now, moving fast on a southwesterly course, an indistinct shape that was the boat itself. Seconds later, as Cape stood there panting, the shape vanished beyond another slender wooded peninsula.
In the new hush he heard thrashings in the woods behind him. Then a shout: “Cape! Where the hell are you?” Mahannah’s voice. He turned to see flashlight beams throwing crazy patterns of light and shadow among the trees. Not answering the hail, he stood there waiting.
Mahannah burst into sight first, torch in one hand, a shotgun from his gun cabinet clenched in the other. Sturgess and Wineberg were with him, neither man armed.
“Where’d he go?” Mahannah demanded.
“Out on the lake. He had a power boat waiting here.”
Sturgess said, “You took a chance, running after him like that. He might’ve shot you too.”
“He tried hard enough inside. Those last two rounds were aimed at me.”
Cape stepped past the others, started back along the path. After a few seconds they trooped after him. Mahanilah came up alongside, lighting the way with his flashlight, but he had nothing more to say just yet. Neither did Cape.
Inside, Bellah and Jones were perched on one of the couches, big snifters of cognac in their hands, both white-faced and wearing stunned expressions. A sheet had been found and used to shroud the body of Andrew Vanowen. Blood stained it over what was left of the dead face. The poker table still lay on its side, chips and cards, shattered glass and streaks of blood, littering the floor around it and the sheeted mound.
Jones stirred and said to Mahannah, “We had to cover him. His head… the blood…”
“One of you notify the county sheriff?”
“I did,” Bellah said. “They’re on the way.”
Cape made a detour to the wet bar. Reaction had set in; his head ached, his legs felt jellied. When he leaned for support on the bar, he noticed a coagulating red smear on his palm. Vanowen’s blood. He went around behind the bar, washed his hands in the sink there.
Jones was saying, “Window in your bedroom’s open, Vince. Must be how the bastard got inside.”
“How’d he know about the game?” Wineberg asked rhetorically. “We don’t advertise when we’re playing.”
“Never mind that. Why in God’s name did he kill poor Andy?”
Cape helped himself to a slug of cognac.
Sturgess said, “Andy recognized him, that’s why. Said his name just before he was shot. What was it…. Johnson?”
“Judson,” Mahannah said. “Boone Judson.”
“Right. But who the hell is Judson? How’d Andy know him?”
Mahannah turned to look at Cape. His slick, handsome face was set in grim lines, his gaze no longer friendly.
“No,” Cape said.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“He didn’t kill Vanowen because he was recognized. That’s not why he fired those last two rounds at me, either.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“When he stepped forward and took the sack out of my hand, I got a good look at his eyes through the mask holes. They were brown.”
“So?”
“Judson’s eyes are blue,” Cape said. “Whoever the gunman is, he’s not Boone Judson.”
19
Inside of an hour, the house and property were swarming with Douglas County sheriff’s personnel. The man in charge was a plainclothes captain named D’Anzello. Mid-forties, big without being fat, deceptively soft-spoken and slow-moving; mop of black hair, bushy salt-and-pepper mustache. Efficient, professional. The kind of man who doesn’t have to say or do much to command respect or attention, whose presence in a room is enough to make him its focal point.
D’Anzello asked preliminary questions to get an overview of what had happened. Then he took them one by one into Mahannah’s study, while the rest waited their turn in the main living room. Mahannah was the first. So Cape knew he’d be second even before he was called.
The study had the same determinedly masculine look as the rest of the house, dominated by a desk of some polished wood whose color matched the redwood paneling. D’Anzello hadn’t appropriated the desk. Both he and a second, younger plainclothes-man were on their feet, waiting in the middle of the room.
D’Anzello said, “Sit down, Mr. Cape.”
“I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself. Matthew Cape, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Current residence?”
“Lakeside Grand in Stateline.”
“Current permanent residence?”
“I don’t have one. Mahannah must’ve told you that.”
“Last place you lived for more than a week or two?”
“Rockford, Illinois. Born there, lived there all my life until a few weeks ago.”
“What happened a few weeks ago?”
Cape told him, keeping it terse.
“So now you just travel around the country, living out of a suitcase. The vagabond life.”
“That’s one term for it.”
“Finance this lifestyle how?”
“Savings, mostly.”
“Supplemented by gambling winnings?”
“Not really. I like to gamble, but it’s only a hobby.”
“High-stakes poker?”
“When I can afford it. The game tonight was about my limit.”
The other sheriff’s investigator had a tape recorder going and was making written notes besides. That was all he was there for, to make sure they got everything they might need. D’Anzello did all the talking.
“Ever been in trouble before?” he asked.
“Gambling trouble? No.”
“Any kind of trouble.”
“Kid stuff in Rockford.”
“What kind of kid stuff?”
“Possession of marijuana when I was fifteen. Charge was dropped.”
“Still smoke dope, do you, Mr. Cape?”
“No.”
“Use any other kind of drugs?”
&n
bsp; “No.”
“What about adult trouble? With the law, I mean.”
“None.”
“Not even a speeding ticket?”
“Not even a parking ticket,” Cape said.
“We’ll check on that, you know.”
“Go right ahead. The closest to adult trouble I’ve had was a month or so ago in New Orleans. I happened to witness a purse-snatching, chased the thief, caught him, and held him until the law got there. You can check on that, too.”
“We will,” D’Anzello said. “Let’s move on to your reasons for being in this area.”
“Mahannah must’ve filled you in on that.”
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
Cape’s smile was faint, wry. “You know how tired I am of telling this story?”
“A man was murdered here tonight, Mr. Cape,” D’Anzello said in sharper tones. “Tell the story one more time, and don’t leave anything out.”
“Sure. One more time.”
When he was done, D’Anzello said, “Let’s see if I have this straight. You took the satchelful of money from the Judsons and just let them walk away scot-free.”
“That’s right.”
“Why? They’d run this scam on you and the conventioneers—professional cardsharps certain to keep on fleecing other innocent people. If you’re such a good Samaritan, why didn’t you report them to the San Francisco police, take them out of commission?”
“I never said I was a good Samaritan. I don’t put that label on myself.”
“What label would you put on yourself?”
“None. I wore one for too many years in Rockford.”
“Answer the question. Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“It would’ve meant hanging around there for days, maybe longer. I didn’t want to get that involved.”
“You drove up here with those photographs. Got yourself involved with Mahannah and the Vanowens.”
“They’re not the main reason I came to Tahoe,” Cape said. “I like to gamble, I told you that.”
“So delivering the photos and telling about the Judsons was an incidental good deed.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“Like divvying up the sixteen thousand among the other marks.”
“Not so incidental in that case.”
“You didn’t think for a minute about keeping the entire sixteen thousand? After all, who’d’ve known except the Judsons? And they weren’t in a position to do anything about it.”
“I’m not a thief,” Cape said. “It was the other players’ money, they’d been cheated the same as I had. If you don’t believe I returned it to them, I’ll give you their names, and you can get their addresses from the hotels and ask them.”
D’Anzello said mildly, “Maybe you just had bigger fish to fry.”
“Meaning what?”
“The Vanowens and Vince Mahannah. Using those photos to worm your way into their good graces, get yourself an invitation to the private game tonight.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think anything. Yet.”
“I had no idea who the people in those photos were when I came here.”
“Might’ve been something else in the satchel to identify them.”
“There wasn’t.”
“So you say. But we only have your word for that, don’t we.”
“And I suppose I knew about Mahannah’s private game in advance, too. Also from something in the satchel.”
“It’s possible.”
“I didn’t invite myself here tonight,” Cape said. Hammer-pound in his head now, a gnawing queasiness in his gut. “Mahannah issued the invitation. Ask him.”
“I already did. If he hadn’t invited you, you could’ve been ready to manipulate him into it.”
“To set up what happened here tonight, is that what you’re getting at?”
“The robbery, yes. Another possibility.”
“Me and the gunman in cahoots. Crap.”
“Mr. Vanowen identified him as Boone Judson just before he was shot. Everyone agrees to that.”
“Well, he was mistaken. The right body type, but Judson has blue eyes and the gunman had brown eyes. I told the others that before you got here. And he wasn’t wearing contact lenses, if that’s what you’re thinking. There’s no good reason for Judson or whoever the real gunman was to try to change his eye color.”
“That isn’t what I was thinking,” D’Anzello said.
“No?”
“No. What I’m thinking is that we have only your word, your unsubstantiated word, about the color of Judson’s eyes. Or anything else about him.”
“So what’s your scenario, then? Vanowen was killed because the gunman panicked at being recognized?”
“Makes sense that way.”
“He wasn’t Boone Judson,” Cape said. He had to struggle to keep a tight rein on his temper. “And his last two shots were meant for me. Look at the burn hole in my shirt, if you don’t believe me. If I was his partner, why would he want to take me out?”
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? He had the loot in hand, and with you dead he wouldn’t have to split it. Kill one, kill two.”
“You’re wrong, Captain. Dead wrong.”
“Then give me a better explanation. Who’s the shooter, if not Judson?”
“Somebody with a boat. Somebody who knows the lake well enough to find this place in the dark, and stoned besides. Somebody local.”
“Stoned?”
“The way he kept fidgeting, the sound of his voice. And his pupils were dilated.”
“Then how could you tell they were brown?”
“Dilated, not invisible. They were brown, all right.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“I didn’t have a chance. You kept me too busy with questions about my personal history.”
D’Anzello didn’t like that. But he said only, “If Vanowen’s ID was wrong, why was he shot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did Judson and the woman—Tanya, is it?—have the photographs in the first place? Why did they come to Tahoe? Why was she so scared when she showed up in your room at the Grand? How did she know where to find you? What’s their connection to what happened here tonight?”
“Same answer to every question. I don’t know.”
“All you know is what you’ve told us, what you’ve been telling everybody all along.”
“That’s right. And you can’t prove any different.”
“Can’t we?”
“No, because it’s God’s honest truth.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Cape said, “More questions, or can I leave now?”
“This room, but not the premises. We’ll tell you when.”
“I’d like to get some sleep.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” D’Anzello said. When Cape turned for the door, he added, “Once you get back to the Grand, better make arrangements for an extended stay. You understand?”
Bitterly: “Yeah, I understand.”
“Cooperation goes a long way with me, Mr. Cape. It helps me stay focused on a man as innocent until proven guilty, instead of the other way around.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be available when you want to talk to me again.”
Available. Another word for trapped.
Three A.M. before they let him leave. Cape was in the ’Vette, the engine rumbling, warming up, when Mahannah came rushing out of the house and leaned down to the driver’s window. It was the first chance he’d had for private words with Cape since the law’s arrival; the way he hissed them out, they’d been building in him like gas.
“If you had anything to do with this, Cape, by God I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
“I didn’t.”
“Even if not, you’re still partly to blame.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Showing up here, putting all of us on edge. None
of this might’ve happened if you’d stayed the hell away from Lake Tahoe.”
“Odds on the robbery would’ve gone down whether I was at the table tonight or not.”
“So you say. I don’t like those odds.”
Cape made no reply.
Parting shot from Mahannah: “Innocent or guilty, Cape, you’re bad luck. You’re a walking pair of snake eyes.”
20
No sleep. Too keyed up.
He kept going over it in the clinging darkness. Dead ends, angles that wouldn’t connect to other angles. Like trying to work up a sales pitch with half the facts and figures missing.
Mahannah’s last words to him added up, though. About the only thing that did.
Bad-luck Cape.
Cape, the walking pair of snake eyes.
Somewhere past six he finally slept. Two hours or so, that was all. He woke up groggy, aching in his joints, soaked in sweat. A long shower didn’t make him feel much better.
Before he left the room he called Visa and MasterCard to report that his credit cards had been stolen. Downstairs, he made arrangements for a lengthier stay at the Grand. He’d left a thousand dollars in the hotel safe before heading out to Mahannah’s last night; he claimed three hundred of it now. Four thousand gone in the robbery, along with his wallet and cards. If D’Anzello didn’t open up his box pretty soon, he’d have to arrange with a local bank for a transfer of funds from his Rockford account. Losing the money was bad enough. Losing his freedom for an indefinite period was a hell of a lot worse.
The day stretched ahead of him, long and empty.
Pioneer Trail, Black Bart Road.
Nothing. Grabbing at straws, pissing in the wind.
Cave Rock.
Lacy wasn’t home. He drove around, drove around, stopped at a café and forced himself to eat something, returned to her dog-vomit house on Lake Summit Road. Still not home.
Back to the Lakeside Grand? No. Mahannah’s house, see if he was there and what his mood was today? Not yet, not this soon.
That left Rubicon Bay.
The gates were open at the entrance to the Vanowen property. When Cape reached the bottom of the curving drive, he had the parking area to himself. But a car was drawn up under the carport: silver BMW, the same one as in the photo of Stacy Vanowen.
Step to the Graveyard Easy Page 10