Saratoga Payback

by Stephen Dobyns

  A New York state trooper stopped him as he approached the tape. The trooper wore a bright yellow raincoat, and something like a hat-condom covered his Stetson.

  “No press,” said the trooper.

  Charlie shook his head. “I’m a PI. Hutch called and told me to get down here right away.”

  “Hutch?”

  “Lieutenant Frank Hutchins, Saratoga Department of Public Safety. He’s expecting me. Come on, already.” He handed the man his driver’s license and tried to recall the names of any troopers he might have met if Hutchins hadn’t as yet arrived, but his mind drew a blank.

  “He’s down at the barn.” The deputy lifted the yellow tape so Charlie could get through.

  He found Hutchins among a circle of men just inside the barn door. Charlie had no doubt about what was in the center of the circle. Looking between the men, he saw a lopsided pool of blood, gleaming in the glare of the lights. Horses whinnied and stamped in their stalls. Then, looking further, Charlie saw the soles of a pair of ornate Western boots. Fletcher Campbell, Charlie knew, never wore cowboy boots.

  He touched Hutchins’s arm. “Who is it?”

  Hutchins turned, glared at Charlie in moral outrage. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m doing here.” Charlie tried to sound calm and reasonable. No way was he going to let Hutchins make him leave.

  “You’re a civilian, for crying out loud. Go home!”

  Charlie took a step forward to get a better look. “Campbell’s a friend of mine and I’m working for him. Who’s the victim?”

  “Campbell’s security guy, Leon Hufnagel. He used to be a Saratoga cop. He didn’t even have a chance to draw his weapon. Got him from behind.”

  Charlie didn’t recognize the name. He took a step closer. Hufnagel was sprawled on his back. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The front of his heavy, sand-colored coat was puddled with blood that oozed onto the barn floor. He seemed about fifty, and his thick, square face looked as if he were trying to lift several cinder blocks. Charlie guessed he’d been killed in the last hour. “Who found him?” he asked.

  “A sheriff’s deputy heard a shout and came to investigate. Hufnagel was already dead. Nobody else was around. Look, Charlie, you gotta get out of here. I don’t care if you’re working for Campbell. This is the sheriff’s case. I’m just a guest.” Hutchins sneezed and wiped his nose on a gray handkerchief. “And I should be home in bed!”

  “Talk to Campbell. I’m sure he’d want me here.” This was nothing Charlie really believed.

  “He’s not in his house. We can’t find him. He and his wife have disappeared. And no cars are missing.”

  “Are there footprints?”

  “There might have been, but the troopers and sheriff’s men have tramped all over the place and made a mess of things. All I can say’s there’re no prints in the snow going off into the fields.”

  Charlie remembered the darkened house. “And the lights?”

  “The wires were cut. National Grid’s on its way out. The security lights have their own power source.”

  “What about the dogs?”

  Hutchins sneezed again. “One’s dead. No one’s seen the other.”

  Several nearby deputies kept giving Charlie suspicious looks. He rose up on his toes, stiffened his back and tried to look imposing. He wasn’t going to leave till he knew more about what had happened.

  “And you went thoroughly through the house?”

  Hutchins didn’t get a chance to answer as a large red-faced man in plainclothes interrupted them. It was the undersheriff: an official being officious. Charlie remembered that his name was Maroni, but he didn’t recall his first name.

  “Who’s this guy, Hutchins?” Maroni had a professional growl: half gravel, half distrust.

  The lieutenant gave a slight, forbearing shrug. “He’s from Saratoga.”

  “Is he a cop?”

  Hutchins became less happy. What was Charlie? An interested citizen, a Nosey Parker, a gate-crasher?

  Charlie spoke up: “I’m doing investigative work for Campbell. The guy who killed Hufnagel also tried to kill me. You’ve got to send another car . . .”

  Maroni stared at Charlie from under heavy lids. “I don’t ‘got to’ do anything. How d’you know who killed Hufnagel? You a civilian?”

  Hutchins’s discomfort increased. “Charlie’s been nosing around from the start. I’ll tell you about it . . .”

  The undersheriff pointed a fat, red finger at Charlie’s nose, as if this were the very purpose of fat, red fingers. “Get the fuck outta here, civilian, or you’re in a mountain of shit!”

  Charlie tried to think of an answer that would let him stay longer. Then he asked calmly, “Have you found Campbell’s panic room?”

  “His what?” Maroni looked at Lieutenant Hutchins, who shook his head.

  The surprise and perplexity expressed by Hutchins and the undersheriff gave them a woodenheaded likeness, which it pleased Charlie to see. He adjusted his voice to express brusque, machinelike focus. What he thought of as a cop voice. “Campbell’s got a panic room somewhere in his house. You didn’t know about it? I figured he’d let you guys know. It’s where he and his wife are hiding, if they’re not dead.” Though his exterior expressed certainty, Charlie’s interior was full of doubt.

  —

  So Charlie, Lieutenant Hutchins, Undersheriff Maroni and a deputy by the name of Różycki made their way back to the house. Różycki had mentioned that his uncle Witold had built a panic room in his house in Phoenix, and Maroni had invited him along for his technical advice. Their flashlights crisscrossed the muddy path and sparkled off the falling snow. There was no more talk about Charlie getting “the fuck outta here.” After all, he, too, seemed knowledgeable about panic rooms.

  But once inside, Charlie was unsure what to do next. The house remained dark. They stood in the hall and flashed their lights around the living room, but nothing stood out as a suitable hiding place for a secret room: no bookcase or tall mirror, no questionable paneling or false fireplace.

  “Let’s start with Campbell’s study,” said Charlie.

  “Good idea,” said Różycki.

  The lights suddenly came back on as they entered the hall. Charlie started, as if caught doing something illegal. Glancing back, he saw that their boots had left a muddy trail on the burgundy Persian carpet with its field of blue and beige rosettes. He seemed the only one to notice. The police officers continued down the hall, clumping their feet.

  The door to the study had been broken open; yellow splinters of wood were scattered over the carpet. On the wall to the right, a picture window looked out onto the snowy dark. In front of the window stood an antique mahogany partners desk with nine drawers on either side and a green leather writing surface. The leather padding of the mahogany swivel desk chair was the same shade of green. The color, Charlie realized, of the Campbell tartan. The seven-piece desk set—letter tray, pencil cup, memo pad and suchlike—also had green leather, as did the handle of the brass letter opener. On the far side of the desk was a bronze statue of a racehorse with a bridle on a green marble base with its head turned approvingly at whoever might be sitting in the desk chair. A small plaque on the base was engraved with the name “Bengal Lancer.”

  The two mahogany visitor’s chairs were also covered with green leather. Charlie recalled sitting in one of them the previous fall after Bengal Lancer had been stolen and it brought back disagreeable memories.

  On the wall across from the door, a second window looked out toward the barn, while on either side were paintings of racehorses. The saddle pads and jockeys’ silks again showed off Campbell’s green-and-blue tartan. Across the room from the desk, a seven-unit mahogany bookcase rose from the floor to the ceiling. Only the center unit held books. Other units held trophies of various so
rts: loving cups, plaques, medals, framed certificates and colored ribbons. Half were for horses. Other awards were for different sports—curling, golf and haggis hurling. Still more were for successes in business and civic affairs. Close to the bookcase were two leather pub chairs angled toward a flat TV on the wall near the door.

  “This guy’s got some kind of fixation,” said Hutchins, still snuffling.

  “I bet he gets most of these from lawn sales,” said Różycki.

  “So where’s the secret room, Mr. Civilian?” asked Maroni.

  “It must be behind the bookcase,” said Charlie, trying to sound knowledgeable. Różycki agreed with a nod.

  Charlie walked over to one of the units and tugged at it. Nothing happened. Then he reached over a shelf between two loving cups and knocked on the back panel. It sounded solid.

  “Where’s the keyhole, Charlie?” asked Hutchins sarcastically.

  “They don’t have keyholes,” said Różycki. “They’ve electromagnetic locking systems. You got to turn something or twist something or push something. It can be as simple as a chess piece or one of these little horse statuettes. Or he might use a hidden iris scanner—that’s what my uncle’s got.”

  “What about hinges?” asked Maroni. “Does the door swing out?”

  “My uncle’s door rotates on car axle bearings,” said Różycki, “and underneath it’s got a special caster roller for extra support. And some have double doors.”

  So over the next five minutes they twisted, lifted and poked the loving cups, plaques, medals and the rest until Maroni said, “This is a fucking waste of time.”

  “Not necessarily, sir,” said Różycki politely. “There’s a small camera hidden at the top of that second unit on the right.”

  “I don’t see any fuckin’ camera!” said Maroni. But then they saw it: a small lens poking out from under the belly of a racehorse statuette.

  “Is he watching us?” asked Hutchins.

  But Różycki couldn’t answer that. In any case, the presence of the camera encouraged them to keep looking.

  Charlie inspected the books in the center unit. After finishing with the bottom three shelves, he began with the fourth, lifting out three thick volumes of A History of Clan Campbell by Alastair Campbell of Airds. Nothing happened. On the shelf above were James Wylie’s three-volume History of the Scottish Nation or The History of the Celtic Church from Pre-historic Times to Medieval Times, John Tweed’s The House of Argyll and the Collateral Branches of the Clan Campbell: From the Year 420 to the Present Time and eight volumes of Scottish history by John Prebble: Glencoe, The Highland Clearances, Culloden, The Darien Disaster and others.

  Charlie began to tilt the books backward one after another; then he paused to leaf through Prebble’s history of the Battle of Culloden. Despite being in a rush, despite being eager to find Campbell, despite being desperate to get to Artemis’s farm and make sure she was safe, Charlie wished he could sit down in one of Campbell’s soft chairs and read about Culloden and the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie as the world and its many dangers faded away.

  The impulse was brief. Then, a few seconds later, when he tilted back the top of The House of Argyll and the Collateral Branches of the Clan Campbell, there was a movement. With a whisper, the center unit of the bookcase began to slide out and pivot to the right. Charlie jumped back, got tangled up in his feet and stumbled to the rug. His fall was the only noise until the undersheriff said, “What the fuck?”

  Behind the bookcase was a gray steel, vault-style door. In its center was a bolt-throwing mechanism with a five-spoked steel wheel about a foot and a half across. Above the wheel was a small screen. The wheel began to turn and in another moment Campbell stood before them, red-faced and breathing hard. In his left hand he held a shotgun, while tucked in his belt was his shiny Colt Python.

  “It fucking took you long enough,” said Campbell. “I was watching you.”

  “Then why didn’t you open the goddamn door?” demanded Hutchins.

  “I thought the guy was still around. The power outage shut down the ventilation. We both felt sick. We could of suffocated in there! You catch him?”

  Glancing at the police officers, Charlie wondered if he was the only person who had a fleeting desire to push the door shut with Campbell on the other side. Then, over Campbell’s shoulder, he saw his young wife, Ursula, her pretty face tense with fear.

  “Who’re you talking about?” said the undersheriff. “Your security guy’s dead. He got his throat cut in your barn. What’s going on here?”

  “Jesus,” said Campbell. “I told him to get in here to the safe room, but he said he could handle any trouble. Poor dope.”

  This particular expression of sympathy pleased no one.

  “That still doesn’t explain what’s going on,” said the undersheriff.

  Ursula Campbell pushed past her husband. She was a tall blonde in her late thirties. Her small smile was as friendly as a cocked mousetrap. “You have to be finding out about this person,” she said with her accent. “I saw him in the hall. He wanted to kill us.”

  She explained that she and “Fletch,” as she called Campbell, had been in the study watching TV. At some point Campbell had asked her to get him a beer from the kitchen. Going into the hall, she saw a young man in a hat and raincoat on the other side of the living room. “He was a complete stranger to me,” she said, “and I required to know why he was in my house.”

  The man had shouted, and she’d run back to the study, locking the door behind her. Then she and Campbell retreated to the safe room.

  After a moment, Maroni inquired: “What’d the guy shout?”

  “‘Are you ready to die?’”

  Charlie was silent as he considered his reaction to such a question. Sheer terror, he expected, with the hope he wouldn’t wet himself.

  “You see a weapon?” asked Maroni.

  Ursula nodded. “He had a knife, a large hunting knife.”

  “Can you say anything else about what he looked like?” asked Lieutenant Hutchins.

  “He was tall and he looked strong. I was frightened.”

  Charlie touched Hutchins’s arm. “I’m going over to Artemis’s. Get Maroni to send more men over there.”

  Twenty-one

  Although Artemis’s property was close to Fletcher Campbell’s, her driveway was at least two miles away and her house was several hundred yards off the road. It was still snowing and perhaps eight inches had fallen. Against the hillside and along the hedgerows, the wind had sculpted the snow into drifts. Charlie had called Artemis when he left Campbell’s, but she didn’t pick up. He called again when he turned into her open gate, but again there was no answer.

  The driveway was deep with snow, but another car had come through fairly recently. Although Charlie didn’t know the driver, he was afraid it might have been Paulie Durkin. And what might be the consequences of that? He kept the wheels of the Golf in the furrows made by the earlier car and gunned the motor, yanking the wheel as his car swerved back and forth.

  The glare of the snow in his headlights made it difficult to see any distance, but soon he saw the sheriff’s deputy’s white-and-red Impala parked at the side of the drive, with its motor running and its windshield wipers beating back and forth. Charlie pulled up behind it and got out of his Golf. He expected the deputy to lower his window, but there was no movement. Charlie approached the car and rapped on the driver’s window. There was no response. He tried the door and pulled it open, thinking he’d find the deputy asleep. The interior light came on. The car was empty.

  Charlie stepped back and looked down at the snow, assuming he’d see footprints, but they weren’t clear; or rather, the snow had been disturbed, but any obvious prints were being covered again. However, in his headlights, he could see a trail of indentations leading along the drive. Perhaps it was one person’s prints; perhaps mor
e.

  Returning to his car, Charlie tried to reverse, but after a few feet the wheels began to spin and his car came to a stop. He tried to move forward, but again the wheels spun and whined and he stopped. He reversed again and advanced again as his wheels dug themselves more deeply into the snow. Then he gave it up. The Golf would have to stay where it was.

  Charlie retied his scarf, pulled down his cap and drew the Benelli toward him across the seat. Its cold metal on his bare skin felt like a burn. He kept his gloves in his coat pockets, thinking they would only be a hindrance if he needed to reload the shotgun. As he opened the car door, the overhead light went on and there was a ding-ding noise signaling that the keys hadn’t been removed. He groaned, grabbed the keys and got out, making sure not to slam the door. Then he stopped and listened. Could someone be waiting nearby? He heard only the wind.

  Charlie made his way toward the house. Windblown flakes stung his cheeks and he shuffled ahead in a half crouch. Shortly he realized that no lights were on, not even the big outside light mounted over the barn doors, or where he thought the two barns must be. Everything was dark. He tried to think of a rational cause for this. Perhaps the snow had brought down a wire; while that might be likely, he didn’t believe it.

  Up ahead, Charlie saw Victor’s snow-covered Mercedes parked to the left side of the drive. A hazy cloud of black diesel exhaust drifted back to mix with the snow caught in the beam of Charlie’s flashlight. He shuffled forward. With the light in his left hand and the Benelli in his right, both his hands were numb with cold. He attempted to grip the shotgun in the crook of his arm and worried that he might drop it.

  Then, looking up, he received a shock. Just beyond the Mercedes, he saw another car. It was Janey’s red Mazda6. Had she driven to Artemis’s house when he’d driven to Campbell’s? He struggled to move faster, but the combination of wind and deepening snow was like a hand pressed against him.

  Coming up behind the Mercedes, Charlie told himself that Victor was surely clutching his Chief’s Special, ready to fire at the slightest provocation. He rapped several times on the trunk to alert Victor of his presence. Then he pushed forward along the right side to the door. The heater was blowing at full power and the windows were clear. He peered through the glass. Victor was not inside.