“I didn’t get a very good look,” Moncreiff said.
I got up.
“Ask him,” I repeated, and started toward the stairway.
Behind me I could hear Viviase ask patiently, “What did the killer look like?”
I started down the stairs and heard Moncreiff begin with, “Five-foot-seven or seven and a half…”
I went back to my office. There was a call waiting from Harvey the Hacker. One of the things he told me almost certainly ended Viviase’s plan to get Trasker legally out of Hoffmann’s house. The other thing he told me confirmed what I had pretty much figured out about who had been taking shots at me.
I called Ames at the Texas Bar and Grill and told him about the Laundromat.
“Can you ride shotgun for me for a few days?” I asked.
“No problem,” he said. “Be right over.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
Ames was waiting outside when I got there. The sky was still overcast, but it wasn’t raining and he didn’t need his slicker for anything other than covering his shotgun.
He climbed in and sat back. I had brushed off the front seat as much as I could, but I’d still have to answer to Fred and Alan. Ames didn’t ask where we were going, which was just as well because it was probable we were headed for the two places Detective Etienne Viviase most wanted me to stay away from.
Stop number one was less than five minutes away, the office of Dr. Obermeyer. This time there were two patients waiting in the reception room, an ancient, little, bent-over woman who tilted her head upward and glared at an equally old man directly across from her, who met her glare for glare.
Neither of them looked up at us when we entered.
Carla the receptionist, hair eater, however, did. Her glare was even better than the old couple.
“I’m calling the police,” she said.
“First give Dr. Obermeyer a name,” I said. “I don’t think he’ll want the police coming to talk about it and I don’t think he’ll be happy with you if you call the police before you give him the name.”
She hesitated.
“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble the last time I was here,” I said. “You’ve got your job and you were just trying your best to do it.”
She picked up the phone and pushed a button.
“That man with the baseball hat is back,” she said. “With another man. He says I should give you a name.”
She looked up at me.
“Dutcher,” I said.
“Dutcher,” she said into the telephone. “Yes.”
She hung up.
“He’ll be with you in a minute,” she said.
I sat. Ames stood. It was less awkward to stand when you had a shotgun in your jacket. We watched the old couple glare at each other across the room for just about a minute. Then the door to Obermeyer’s office opened and a well-dressed, slender woman came out. She was probably in her late forties. She was certainly not happy.
“The tests results will be back in three days,” Obermeyer said, gently touching the woman’s shoulder. “I’ll call you immediately. I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about. We just want to be careful.”
The woman glanced at Ames and me as she went out the door, and Obermeyer said, “Mr. and Mrs. Spoznik, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
The glaring couple gave him no sign that he had penetrated their concentration.
Obermeyer nodded at Ames and me and we followed him into his office. He moved behind his desk, a barrier from patients and intruders like me. Ames sat in one chair, right leg not quite bent, and I sat in the other.
“You mentioned a name,” Obermeyer said.
“Dutcher,” I said. “You know it, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Kevin Hoffmann’s real name is Dutcher, Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.
“So?” he asked.
“He had a sister, Claire Dutcher,” I said.
“Interesting,” he said. “But-”
“Fraud, murder,” I said. “And you’re a party to it.”
“Wait,” Obermeyer said, quickly standing. “I had nothing to do with any fraud, any murder.”
“William Trasker’s not too sick to me moved, is he?” I asked.
“In my opinion…” Obermeyer began, reverting to his role as confident physician.
“It’s all going to come apart in the next few days,” I said. “You’ll go down with it.”
Obermeyer sat down again.
“William Trasker is a very sick man,” he said. “I’ve kept him comfortable and sedated. He is dying.”
“But if he wasn’t sedated,” I said, “could he get up, walk, talk?”
“How long has he got, Doc?” Ames asked.
Obermeyer looked at Ames with surprise.
“That’s difficult to determine,” the doctor said. “As I told Mr. Fonesca, probably a few days.”
“If a group of cancer experts looked at him,” I said, “what would they say?”
Obermeyer sunk back.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh.
“He can function, move, make decisions?” I asked.
Obermeyer nodded and said, “I told you, he is heavily sedated.”
“And you’ll tell that to the police?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell the police that I think that Mr. Trasker is in no condition to make decisions for himself, that it should be left to his next of kin, whoever has power of attorney.”
“And we both know who that is,” I said.
Obermeyer said nothing. I got up. So did Ames.
“There’s a small town in North Dakota,” Obermeyer said, almost to himself. “No more than six thousand people in the entire county. That’s where I came from. They need a doctor. I think I’ll go back there. It’s simply not worth all this.”
He looked up at me as if he needed my permission.
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And I won’t try to stop you if…”
“If what?” Obermeyer said hopefully.
“Is there anything I can give Trasker that would bring him back, anything fast?”
“You want him conscious and functioning?”
“I want him conscious and functioning.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve got samples.”
He got up and we followed him through a door to an examining room with a locked glass cabinet. He opened the cabinet with a key on the ring in his pocket and took out an amber pill bottle.
“Take the bottle,” he said. “Three of these with water will work. But no more than three.”
“How fast?” I asked.
“Imagine forty cups of coffee in one gulp,” he said.
Ames and I left him standing next to his examining table. In the outer office we passed the glaring couple. They seemed to be going for the Guinness World Records.
The clouds had thinned out now. I turned on 930 on the radio and listened to Neil Bortz while I drove down the trail. Fifteen minutes later we were at the gate to Kevin Hoffmann’s estate.
We got out and I pushed the button on the stone wall. No one answered. I pushed the button again. This time Stanley came out of the house, adjusted his glasses, and walked down the path to face us through the fence.
“Fonesca,” he said. “I’ve made some calls about you. There are people who think you’re not very interested in living.”
“LaPrince,” I said. “There are people in Louisiana who remember you.”
He paused and shook his head.
“You sure you want to go that way?” he asked, looking at Ames with amusement.
“Tell Hoffmann we’re here,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Stanley said with a shrug, and went back to the house, leaving the door open behind him. There was a click and the gate opened.
Ames and I went up the cobbled path and through the door. Kevin Hoffmann stood just inside the door. There were no lights on. He stood in a patch of sun
that came from a window on his right.
He was wearing white designer jeans, a black silk shirt, and a two-day growth of gray stubble. He did not look good. He was in no mood for New York Yankees attire.
“Dutcher,” I said.
Stanley stood back to Hoffmann’s left, facing Ames, who stood facing Stanley. Stanley’s right hand was in his pocket. The pocket looked heavy.
“That is the name I was born with,” Hoffmann said. “How does that change things?”
“Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.
“My parents were very patriotic,” he said. “My father loved this country, loved Lindbergh, Sergeant York, Franklin Roosevelt, Enos Slaughter, and anything about baseball. Are you here to accept my offer?”
Kevin Hoffmann was smiling, but the smile had the hint of a twitch and his words a touch of nervous amusement.
“Your sister love baseball too?”
The smile was gone now.
“My sister’s dead,” he said.
“I know. She was shot two days ago. Claire Elizabeth Dutcher, who changed her name to Claire Collins when she became an actress, who changed her name to Roberta Trasker when she married the man lying upstairs.”
“Yes,” said Hoffmann. “Bill is my brother-in-law. And I have power of attorney. Which, according to my lawyer, means that since he is unable to make decisions on his own because of his illness, I can make all decisions for him.”
“Your sister leave a will?” I asked.
“A…I’m sure she…You think I killed Claire for Bill’s money?”
“It’s a possibility,” I said.
“Bill and Claire have children, grandchildren,” he said. “It’s none of your business but I loved my sister.”
“Who died before I could convince her to get her husband out of here so he could vote on the Midnight Pass issue, which will make you even richer than you are.”
“Time to leave, Fonesca,” he said, taking a step forward.
“Going to make quite a story on television and in the newspapers,” I said. “Ann Rule might even come back here and write a book about this.”
“Stanley,” he said, and Stanley stepped forward.
Stanley and Ames were a few feet apart now, an amused smile on Stanley’s lips, nothing showing on Ames’s face.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Hoffmann turned and walked back into the shadows. Stanley opened the door for us and the three of us marched quietly down the paved driveway while the gate swung open.
Ames and I stepped out.
“‘The meanest thrives the most, where dignity, true personal dignity, abideth not,’” Stanley said through the bars of the gate. He was smiling. “‘A light and cruel world, cut off from all the natural inlets of just sentiment, from lowly sympathy, and chastening truth, where good and evil never have that name.’ Wordsworth.”
He turned and started back toward the house.
“That’s a pair of crazy men,” Ames said.
“Or something like it,” I said, getting in the car.
Ames got in the passenger seat and buckled up.
“So, what do we do?”
“We find a way to get William Trasker out of there before the commission meeting tonight,” I said, shifting into drive and stepping on the gas.
13
“There is enough room in Heaven for every God-loving Christian and all the saints that have been or ever will be,” said Reverend Fernando Wilkens from the pulpit of the Fourth Baptist Church on Tenth Street just off of Orange. “God’s Heaven and bounty show no bounds.”
The walls were brick painted white, with stained-glass windows along both sides of the room depicting stations of the cross.
Directly in front of the pulpit, a simple wooden casket with bronze handles rested on what looked like two sawhorses covered in dark blue velvet.
Ames and I, hats in hand, stood in the back of the air-conditioned church, nearly filled with black men and women and a small sprinkling of whites. I guessed about one hundred fifty people sat listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the deep, confident voice of Reverend Wilkens, dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, his hands on the pulpit, his eyes seeking those below him. Those eyes had met mine when Ames and I entered, but the meeting had only been fleeting.
“Notice,” Wilkens said, holding up his right hand. “I said ‘God-loving’, not ‘God-fearing,’ for the good need never fear God. The problem is that we never think we are good enough. Beware the man or woman who thinks he or she is good enough to enter Heaven. That is self-righteous vanity. We strive to do good. We know the words and commandments of the Lord. We know which we have disobeyed and which we have violated. We know, in fact, my friends, what the right thing to do is. We know that when we transgress we can always ask for forgiveness. We know our Lord is willing to forgive those who truly repent. I said ‘truly’ for the Lord can look into your heart. Your idea of true repentance may be that you are sorry for what you did because it means you won’t be getting into Heaven. No, the only sorry that counts is when you wish you had not hurt another human being. We can but hope and follow the path of righteousness which is in our hearts and souls.”
A woman in the audience said, “Amen.”
“And there is always a price to pay for our sins,” Wilkens went on. “A stab of pain in our conscience for the small indiscretion, a jab of ice to our heart for the large ones.”
“And I know it to be true,” came the woman’s voice again.
“We are here,” Wilkens said, and looked around the gathering in the seats before him. “We are here to bid farewell to the soul of Joseph Lawrence Hopkins. His body we will bury, but his soul has or soon will be taken by the hand of an angel, and may that angel lead him to the land of eternal glory. And to that we say amen.”
The congregation, including Ames and me, said, “Amen.”
Wilkens eyes met mine now and held fast. A few heads turned to see what or who the reverend was looking at.
“Grief is the price we pay for loving and losing,” he said. “Grief is a holy gift which we hold tenderly and then let free. Grief must find its way into our very souls and let us go on living, performing God’s will, making us better human beings for its sake.”
His eyes left mine and turned down to the casket.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “Have you ever known me to lie to you?”
“No,” came the chorus of answers.
“I would be a liar and a hypocrite if I were to tell you Joseph Lawrence Hopkins was a good man. He was, at the age of sixteen, not even a man at all. His was and is a troubled soul, one that made his good mother Marie weep. But he was also a troubled soul who clearly cared for his two sisters and regretted the pain he caused his mother.”
Wilkens lifted both hands, palms up.
“The Lord will weigh the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the body and soul.”
The right hand moved down slowly and then the left and then both hands came up with the palms of the Reverend Fernando Wilkens facing the congregation.
“And the Lord will do what is best. Let us all rise and sing ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’ and as those chosen carefully carry the casket to the waiting hearse, follow them, continuing our song. We will meet at the graveside for internment. Let us rise.”
Everyone rose with a minimum of shuffling as six men, four young and two past the age of fifty, all but one black, came forward and lifted the casket.
Ames and I moved out of the way. The bearers bore their burden through the door, with people following them and singing.
We stood waiting for the crowd to clear the church. Wilkens remained at the pulpit.
“Life is filled with contradictions and enigmas,” Wilkens said, his voice now echoing in the empty hall. “That boy died of a heart attack during a basketball game. The temperature in that gym was almost one hundred degrees. There wasn’t enough money to fix the air-conditioning and he quite literally played his heart out to avo
id the temptation of drugs. You have something to tell me about William Trasker?”
“I’m not sure this is the right place to tell it,” I said, looking around.
Wilkens followed my eyes to a stained-glass image of Christ on his knees with the cross on his shoulder.
“There is nothing that cannot be said here,” Wilkens said. “He would hear us even in a steel tomb. In spite of what you may think or the newspapers may suggest, I am not a hypocrite. I believe in my God and I will do what I feel I must to carry out His wishes.”
I told him about the incidents at Midnight Pass and the Laundromat. I told him about Obermeyer, Stanley, and Hoffmann. I told him Hoffmann was Roberta Trasker’s brother. I told him that I was going to try to get William Trasker to that commission meeting tonight if he were alive, willing, and able.
Wilkens nodded and got out from behind the pulpit. He stood before us now and looked at Ames, me, and at a stained-glass Christ on a stained-glass cross.
“I’ve got a small, well-educated, and sometimes angry group of parishioners who want to change these windows,” he said. “They don’t want a white savior. They claim that Christ was not white but a Jew, a dark Semite, a very dark Semite, certainly not the golden-tressed young man with the well-trimmed beard and sad eyes whose image surrounds us.”
He had a point to make. I had time to listen.
“And they are probably right and I probably agree, but to change the probably fictional image of the Savior would be seen as an alienating challenge to other Christians, both white and black.”
“So you can live with it,” I said.
“Are you a Christian, Mr. Fonesca? I believe you told me you were raised as an Episcopalian.”
“I was. I’m not anything now.”
I was going to add that I wasn’t planning on changing until God appeared before me or sent an emissary with a convincing explanation for what had happened to my wife and my life.
“You’re a man in torment,” Wilkens said. “Bringing William Trasker to the commission table to do something decent will ease your torment, if only a little.”
I said nothing.
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