by Gideon, John
“That, my friend, is no one other than the redoubtable Captain Tristan Whiteleather,” he said, “the builder of Whiteleather Place. That picture was taken in 1895, according to the writing on the back. I’d show you, except it’s screwed to the bulkhead and I’m too lazy to dig for a screwdriver.”
“Where did you get it?”
Renzy hesitated, as though sorting through discarded memories.
“My parents’ estate,” he answered finally. Carl winced. “There was an old trunk in the basement of the house, full of documents and files that had apparently belonged to White-leather. After Mom and Dad—” He stammered and cleared his throat, causing Carl to regret having noticed the picture at all. “After they died, I donated it to the Greely’s Cove Historical Society but kept out a few things. This was one of them.”
“I’m sorry, Renzy,” said Carl. “I didn’t mean to rip open—”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy now, and I can talk about it without choking up—most of the time.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “Remember that old vault in the basement of the house, the one my father always told us to stay away from?”
Carl remembered. Renzy’s father had adamantly warned the boys never to play near the locked steel door in a dark, musty corner of the basement of Whiteleather Place. But, of course, they had played near it, had tested its massive lock and pressed their ears against the cold metal, listening for hints of the creeping dangers that surely lay on the other side.
“The trunk was next to it, along with a lot of other junk from the last century. There’s a rumor among the local history buffs that Whiteleather had built a secret passage off the vault, but nobody has been able to figure out whether it really exists. Anyway, the whole question became moot when I sold the place to Mrs. Pauling. I doubt whether she and Dr. Craslowe would let anybody poke around in the vault, secret passage or no secret passage.”
“What about the other guy in the picture?” Carl wanted to know. “Was he a friend of Captain Whiteleather’s?”
Renzy narrowed his eyes on the picture. “There was a name written on the back along with Whiteleather’s, but the ink was faded out, like somebody had spilled coffee on it. All I could make out was the word merchant, which I suspect is what the guy was. The picture was taken in Sumatra.”
“As in Southeast Asia?”
“For all I know, it could have been Sumatra, Okalahoma,” said Renzy slyly.
“But wasn’t Captain Whiteleather one of those dauntless traders who plied the South Seas?”
“That’s what the legends say. And he must’ve made a handsome living at it, too. The mansion he built is certainly no shack, as you and I well know.”
Renzy retreated to the gallery to fill their coffee mugs yet one more time. “What do you say we get down to serious business?” he said, after returning and handing over Carl’s mug. “First thing we’ve got to worry about is getting you back into the groove here in good old Greely’s Cove. Let’s see, your living arrangements are taken care of, right?”
They were, answered Carl. He and Jeremy would live in the bungalow on Second, where Carl and Lorna had begun their married life. The red tape of probating Lorna’s estate was a mere formality.
“Good,” said Renzy. “Now, what about a law office? You can’t nail your shingle to thin air.”
True. Carl’s plan was to convert Lorna’s gallery on Frontage Street, which entailed yet more red tape in probate court—a hassle, but not an insurmountable one. Lorna’s remaining inventory of paintings, sculptures, and art supplies would have to be auctioned off, a task that Carl did not look forward to. Then carpenters and painters would have to be brought in to undertake the necessary remodeling.
Renzy offered to ramrod the auction, to lend his hands and talents to tying up all the other loose ends.
“You said you wanted a little old-fashioned friendship, didn’t you?” he said, countering Carl’s protest over imposing his burdens on someone else. “Besides, I have nothing but time until the weather clears up. You can repay me by serving as first mate on a long cruise to the San Juans. We’ll shanghai that kid of yours and teach him how to sail, so you and I can sit down here in the saloon and drink. Maybe we can even coax Stu along, provided we can load enough beer aboard. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
It did sound good. But Carl wanted more from his new existence than relaxation, he told Renzy. He intended to involve himself in worthy projects and causes, visiting old people in rest homes, perhaps, or volunteering to help teach illiterate adults to read. He wanted to give something of himself to the community, as much to set a worthy example for his son as to find self-fulfillment.
“Good God!” exclaimed Renzy. “You might even set a good example for me! You’d better watch out, though: If you do too many good things around this town, someone might try to get you back into politics.”
“Never! I’m through with politics forever.”
“Never say never, Bush. The fact is, this town could use a new mayor.”
“Would you stop? The thought of going into politics makes me nauseous, and besides that, we have a perfectly good mayor.”
“Yeah, if you like Bible-thumping bigots. Chester Klundt is one of those unctuous types who thinks that anyone who disagrees with him is an apostate of Hell or an agent of Moscow. We need to be rid of him, and you just might be the man.”
“Renzy, for the last time: I’m not going back into politics!”
“Not even if there’s an honest draft?” Renzy’s face beamed as he needled his old friend. “Hell, I’d run your campaign for you. I can see the slogan now, plastered all over town on billboards and telephone poles, on bumper stickers and yard signs: Carl Trosper: Flexible but Not Flaccid.”
Suddenly, Carl could not hold back the giggles, and they squirted out between his scowling lips. Seconds later he was laughing loudly with Renzy, feeling better about himself and the world than he had in weeks, or maybe even months, or maybe even years.
16
Robinson Sparhawk finished his Belgian waffle in The Coffee Shoppe of the West Cove Motor Inn, gathered up his metal crutches, and hobbled back to his room. Katharine welcomed him as though he had been away for a decade and not a mere forty-five minutes, dancing around the room with worshipful joy, making great thuds on the carpet.
“Calm down, darlin’,” Robbie told the Great Dane while scratching the area between her pointed ears. “You didn’t really think you’d been abandoned now, did you?” She jiggeted her tail and raised a paw to shake hands, telling him that this was exactly what she had thought.
After putting on his sheepskin jacket with the white-fleece lining, a garment he seldom if ever needed in El Paso but that he kept for winter trips to northern climes, Robbie hobbled to the mirror and checked himself for presentability: Except for his puny, link-sausage legs, he didn’t look half-bad for fifty-one. His salt-and-pepper hair was still thick and wavy, his jaw still square, his brown eyes bright and lively despite the squint lines at the corners. Like most west Texans, his face was sun-bronzed and healthy-looking. He straightened his string tie with its slide of hand-tooled Mexican silver and headed for the door, ready for a day’s work.
“Now, be a good girl and heel,” he ordered Katharine, “and don’t be slobbering on the carpets, damn it. I had to talk my ass off to get you in here, told all kinds of lies about how clean and quiet you are.”
The huge dog whimpered and fell in beside him, a model of good behavior.
The parking lot of the West Cove Motor Inn was a dreamscape of fog—not Carl Sandburg’s fog on cat’s paws, but a grainy and coarse-textured cloud that lay heavy on the land. Robbie made his way carefully to his Volkswagen Vanagon, which he had parked in a space reserved for handicapped people, and waited while Katharine did her morning duty in the shrubbery that bordered the lot.
After letting her into the van through its cargo door, he undertook the task of positioning himself in the driver’s seat. A push of a button activ
ated a motorized lift that rotated a wheelchair and lowered it to street-level from its spot behind the steering wheel. Robbie sat down in the chair, pushed the button again, and rode upward and into the cab of the van, where the chair locked into place. On the steering wheel were two movable grips—one for the throttle and another for the brakes—which let him drive solely with his hands, since his feet and legs were virtually useless. These expensive modifications were a gift from the International Association of Chiefs of Police in recognition of Robbie’s long and illustrious service to the criminal justice system, a gift that he could never have afforded to give himself and one that provided a measure of freedom that he otherwise could only have dreamed about.
Robbie started the engine. In accordance with the desk clerk’s directions, he went south on Frontage Street toward City Hall and the Greely’s Cove Police Department, driving at a snail’s pace through the drizzly fog, past storefronts and shops that would have looked at home in any small American town. Something in the atmosphere disturbed him: an arctic silence that seemed unnatural even on a sleepy Saturday morning, an insulating numbness that voided the sun, the sky, even the hush of the tart breeze.
He thought of the island in The Tempest, of the beastlike Caliban’s lament in Act II: “All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats...” He cut himself off upon discovering that he was reciting the lines aloud.
Infections. The town was a capsule in a dream and, like Caliban’s island, saturated with a feeling of enchantment. An island: the thought made him uncomfortable.
Tucked away in the bowels of City Hall, the police department had all the trappings of its counterparts throughout small-town America, except for its lack of a wheelchair ramp alongside the damp concrete steps that descended to its main entrance. The heavy door was yet another barrier to be surmounted, and he nearly lost his balance as he heaved it open. With Katharine at his heel, he approached the walk-up window and waited for the dispatcher to finish on the telephone. A musty, basementlike smell hung in the air. Taped to the colorless plaster walls were posters that pleaded for support of the local police, vigilance against neighborhood crime, contributions to the March of Dimes.
“How-do, sweet thing,” said Robbie to the dispatcher after she hung up the telephone, “my name’s Sparhawk. This here’s Katharine”—Bonnie Willis rose from her seat to peer over the counter at the huge dog who stood at Robbie’s side—“and we’re here to see the police chief. I think he’s expecting us.” Bonnie’s eyes, apparently, had never beheld a canine of Katharine’s proportions, for they grew big as half-dollars.
“Oh, you must be—” She sat down again. Did the rules allow dogs in the station house? Or small horses?
“I’m the psychic y’all sent for. And don’t worry about Katharine—friendliest little old pooch you ever saw.”
Bonnie ushered man and dog into the squad room, where a grim-faced Washington State Patrol sergeant and a pair of official-looking civilians were hunched over a table. None of the three gave more than a quick glance at the visitors. Splayed before them were topographical maps that flopped over the edges of the table, leading Robbie to suppose that they were coordinating the search for the town’s missing citizens. The dispatcher disappeared briefly through a door at the end of a short hallway, then reappeared to motion Robbie in.
“Mr. Sparhawk, I’m Stu Bromton,” said the mountainous, blunt-featured man who rose from his desk in the tiny office. “Welcome to Greely’s Cove. This is Officer Dean Hauck, sort of my right-hand man.”
Robbie leaned on his right crutch and shook the offered hands, grinning from ear to ear. “Right pleased to meet you both. This here’s Katharine, named after Katharine Hepburn, prettiest woman alive except for Miss Willis here, whose first name I’m sad to say I don’t know.”
Bonnie Willis fingered her plastic name tag and blushed hotly while Stu introduced her. “I’ll get some coffee,” she said, after shaking Robbie’s hand, and hurried out. Officer Hauck positioned a chair for Robbie in front of the chief’s desk, and all three sat.
“Mind if I stink up your office?” asked Robbie, pulling a aim-soaked cheroot from his shirt pocket.
“Not at all,” said Stu. “Maybe it’ll deaden the taste of the coffee.” Robbie chuckled and wondered aloud why the worst coffee in the continental United States was found in police-station houses. Hauck jumped from his chair to fetch an ashtray.
“I hope you’ll forgive my informality,” said Stu, alluding to the stained sweat suit he was wearing in place of a police uniform. “Just got back from my morning run. I was about to hit the shower when you got here.”
“You run in this pea soup?” asked Robbie, lighting up. “Sounds like a good way to get hit by a truck.”
“If I didn’t run, I’d weight about six hundred pounds,” said the chief. “It’s also a good way to unwind, burn off a little anxiety. God knows I’ve got enough of that.”
Robbie nodded with sympathy and decided that he liked Bromton. Here was a strong man who was not afraid to admit his weaknesses, and he had a sense of humor to boot.
Bonnie administered coffee, and the men got down to business. After going over the terms of Robbie’s payment in return for services, Stu recounted with more detail than Robbie needed the tragic story that had begun in June of the previous year, nearly nine months past, a story of people who simply vanished on a monthly basis—normal, everyday people who had lived quiet, unremarkable lives. Good folks, all of them: high-school kids like Jennifer Spenser, Josh Jemburg, and Teri Zolten; an old widow like Elvira Cashmore, who had left a rhubarb pie in the oven; hardworking, salt-of-the-earth citizens like Monty Pirtz, the disabled Vietnam vet, and Wendell Greenfield and Peggy Birch and Elizabeth Zaske. The most recent disappearance, that of Sandy Zolten, had occurred a mere ten days after her daughter’s.
“I don’t think I’m overstating the situation when I say that you just might be our last hope,” concluded Stu. “The State Patrol is on the scene in force now, but they haven’t done any better than we have, and quite frankly, Mr. Sparhawk, I don’t expect them to.”
“Not being one to stand on ceremony, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Robbie,” said the psychic, “and if you don’t mind, I’ll call you Stu.”
Then he fell silent, gazing into space while stroking his chin, thinking. The worming anxiety that he had felt during the drive from the motel worsened: This case was unnervingly unique. In all the other serial murder cases he’d undertaken, there were rigid patterns. The victims of homicidal sex maniacs, for example, were all of the same sex, had the same color hair, or were of the same age or build or occupation (prostitutes, notably). Their killers kept to an unbending routine that had major motivational significance. Not that Robbie ever brought these patterns into play: He merely used feeling—not rationale or deduction—in locating bodies or material evidence. His psychic gift did not require reasoning.
That this case apparently had no discernible pattern to it, except for the monthly regularity of the disappearances—and even this pattern had recently fallen apart—bothered him. Patterns, after all, lead to explanations that normal men can understand. Sexual and mental derangement, schizophrenia, and all the other psychoses that drive child-killers and rapists and ax-murderers are explicable, if no less heinous. But this case had no pattern, suggesting that there may be no reason for the tragedies other than pure evil.
An old witch’s warning rang in his mind.
“So where do we start?” asked Stu, sipping his coffee. “How do you usually approach these things?”
“Normally we start with the physical evidence,” answered Robbie. “I take a look at it, paw through it, if that’s possible, and wait for the feelings to hit me. If there’s no physical evidence to speak of, then I ask for items that belonged to the victims, and I go through the same routine. Simple as that.” Dean Hauck, who had been sitting quietly, as though waiting for an opportunity to fetch more coffee or to empty Robbie’s ashtray, spoke up
for the first time!
“I’ve been doing some reading about your cases, Mr. Sparhawk, and I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what you need. For the last couple of days I’ve been collecting things that belonged to the missing people—clothes, jewelry, tools, stuff like that—and I’ve stored them in the evidence locker. Would you like to see them?”
Robbie smiled at the young cop and said, “Sounds good to me, son. Stu here told me on the phone that it was your idea to give me a call. That so?”
“Yes, sir. I first heard about you at the law-enforcement academy. You’re pretty famous, you know.”
Robbie’s smile broadened. In Hauck’s young, earnest face he saw competence and dedication, the makings of a police chief someday, maybe even a politician.
“Let’s start with any evidence found at the scenes of the disappearances—assuming you found some.”
“There isn’t much,” said Stu. “All we have is some kind of gooey slime that was on the seat of a car, the same stuff we found later on the walls of a closet in the motel office, where Sandy Zolten was last seen. We sent it to the crime lab in Seattle, and they sent it back with a short report. Why don’t you bring it in, Dean? It’s in the refrigerator.”
Officer Dean Hauck leapt to the errand.
He returned shortly with a pair of petri dishes in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other: the physical evidence and the report from the crime lab. Robbie suffered a minor thrill of apprehension as Hauck set the petri dishes on the desk before him. What was it, he wondered—the first inkling of psychic impression, even before the lids were off the petri dishes? This seemed unlikely. He bent over the dishes, and Hauck offered him the lab report.