The Witchfinder

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Yes. Imminent Visions has a bid in for the contract on a new downtown convention center. Mr. Grayling is employed by the City of Detroit to investigate all bids. Mr. Arsenault keeps—kept—him up to speed on the figures. They met two or three times a week.”

  “How long did they meet this morning?” I asked.

  “They didn’t. Mr. Arsenault left unexpectedly. Personal errand, he told Greta. He didn’t say when he’d be back. I’ve been through this.” She swept a hand through her stack of hair.

  “Again, please.” St. Thomas had his notebook open, but he wasn’t writing. He might have been checking her story against the record—the number of pages he’d filled with his neat script suggested he’d already entered the uniform team’s notes into the hard drive—or he might just have wanted to be holding something. He had what might have been an old nicotine stain on the inside of his right index finger. That was a habit he’d have downloaded a long time ago.

  The office manager looked at her nails, coral-painted but pruned short, for the keyboard. “Greta said Mr. Grayling arrived a few minutes after Lynn—Mr. Arsenault—left. He waited about fifteen minutes, then looked at his watch and said he’d be back later and went out. Gregory called just after that to report what had happened.”

  “Did Grayling come in from the garage or through the suckers’ entrance?” I asked.

  She glared at me. She had light gray eyes. “Our customers are governments and captains of industry. I’m sure he came in through the main door. The garage is reserved for personnel.”

  “Yeah, a killer would respect that one.”

  “Sergeant, is this man connected with your department?”

  “No, ma’am, he sure isn’t.” The silver glasses turned my way. “I’ve heard of Grayling. Maybe some of the same things you have. The parking guy says nobody came through here since before eight.”

  “I practically had to blow a bugle before he noticed me.”

  “The security guard in the lobby will know if Grayling came in the front. We’ll check him out either way. You too. I’m not going to bother booking you since you never actually identified yourself as a police officer, but we will notify Wayne County you used a deputy’s badge to get past the booth. You might lose it.”

  “That’s okay. It was spoiling the lines of all my suits anyway.”

  “We’ll talk again.” His look said he hoped he’d like my next story better.

  Redburn said, “Stick around town.”

  I looked at St. Thomas. “Did he say that?”

  “He’s new to the division. Color takes time. Remember the sentiment.”

  I walked out of the garage just as the satellite van from Channel 2 rolled to a stop behind the unmarked LeBaron. A reporter I recognized from television hopped out the passenger’s side, pulling on his blazer. He tried to block my path. “Are you with the detectives’ division?”

  “You’re a lot shorter in person.” I walked around him. He sprinted after me, slowing as I got to my car, and executed a snippy little turn back to the van as I climbed behind the wheel. City employees don’t drive vehicles more than two years old.

  I waited for the coroner’s wagon to clear the drive, then powered on out. Just as I hit Euclid a sheet of lightning blanked the windshield. The delayed clap shook the car and the hairs on the back of my hand stood on end. Somebody always has to have the last word.

  Sixteen

  “KEN, HAVE YOU CHECKED out the display of classic and antique autos in the Fisher Building lobby?”

  “I have, Paul. Most impressive. There’s a beautiful old Packard, and a Kaiser, many more I can’t identify, I’m no expert, and there’s a very old one—I don’t know if it’s Henry Ford’s original quadricycle—”

  “I believe it’s a replica, Ken.”

  “Cars have certainly come a long way in a hundred years, haven’t they?”

  “They have. Although I had a Dodge that never quite made it across Eight Mile Road before breaking down.”

  The voices on the radio jabbered in that vein a little longer, stretching until the weather reader came on with the hot flash that a stormfront had entered the area. Just then lightning crackled, interrupting the signal. I switched off the knob.

  By that time the threat had pretty much passed. When I turned onto Jefferson, five drops thudded the dusty hood, raising brown puffs and leaving marks like tiny crop circles. A big gust batted newspapers and what looked like a folding beach chair across the avenue. It was probably just an advertising supplement.

  A thin strip of sunlight appeared to the west and spread like an opening wound. Thunder continued to chortle, but it had lost its stereo effect and seemed to be happening in the northeast. Someone was getting it, Windsor or Chatham.

  It was a disappointment, and not just because it meant the heat wave would continue. I like storms. Just about the time we get it into our heads that we’re actually capable of destroying nature, one comes along like a burst of rude laughter and blows civilization out like a candle. Lamps turn off, fans stop. Computer screens blip and go black. Businesses shut down until Ma Nature decides to lift her hand. This one was just a playful pass.

  Driving along in the widening light I thought about Royce Grayling.

  The fifth estate is murder. Those who commit it for personal gain or to feed a habit—food or drugs or plain bloodlust— must be taken into account when you set out to sum up a society. If you ignore them, they float around among the bar codes and pie graphs, messing up the neat lines. But a killer who pushes the button for politicians is altogether more static. He tends to run on the same track throughout his career, taking out treasury clerks with two sets of books and one athletic mouth, police officials who insist on too much pay for too little service under the counter, middle executives who get religion, disgruntled civil servants with a line to the media, media people with a line to disgruntled civil servants, grifters, grafters, hellraisers, and all the rest of that Byzantine chain of private and public liabilities that can flush an intricate and carefully constructed system down the pipes of reform if certain links aren’t pried loose and scrapped with as little music as possible. That’s why they’re called plumbers.

  Lynn Arsenault had become one such link. The question was how.

  His office manager had said that Imminent Visions had submitted a bid to design a convention center in downtown Detroit; but if the project was somehow connected, icing the CEO during a visit officially related to the project was like drawing a map from the corpse to Grayling’s superiors for whoever cared to follow it. Nothing about the man I had met on the dock in Grosse Pointe had said he was clumsy.

  True, there was the double reverse to consider. There is always the double reverse. You know I’m too smart to do such a dumb thing, so it should follow I’m not a suspect. But if I know that, it won’t take me all night to figure you’re smart enough to know I know and switch back.

  Or more likely, given the linear thinking of cops, reporters, and loose-cannon investigators, I might just jump on the obvious and hang you with it.

  And Royce, my man, you’re smart enough to know that.

  My building was a pressure cooker. The air got hotter and thicker with each flight I climbed. On the third floor—my floor—it had no place else to go but the roof.

  I wrenched open the window behind my desk two more inches. It hadn’t been raised more than half a foot since Dred Scott, and I overheated myself just enough to balance the minimal effect of the draft that crept in through the space; if anything the humidity was worse than it had been before the storm teaser. Summer’s for kids and houseflies.

  “One call, Mr. Walker. No name, just a number.” It belonged to my contact at the City-County Building, the one with the girlfriend at Mumford High.

  It could wait. I called the Marriott, and this time the operator put me through to Stuart Lund.

  “I apologize for before,” he said. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “I’m not interested. Th
ere are complications with the package in Allen Park.” Hotel switchboards are like party lines.

  He caught on right away. “How complicated?”

  “You may be hearing from the cops.”

  “Did you . . .?” He was recalling our brass-knuckles conversation in regard to Arsenault.

  “No, that was a gag. Someone else got there first.”

  “Bad?”

  “It doesn’t get worse. I had to come up with an answer when the cops asked me why I was interested in the package.”

  “You didn’t tell them.”

  “I didn’t, but if I stonewalled they’d have booked me as a material witness. I’m no good to anyone inside. Here’s the play. You hired me to clear up this business about stolen designs.” I gave him a second to catch up.

  He took it. “Stolen designs? Oh, yes. That old matter. Go on.”

  “Your client is concerned about his good name. He wants to set the record straight before he takes his trip.”

  “His trip?”

  “Before he dies.” I had a stranglehold on the receiver.

  “That’s ludicrous.”

  “If it made too much sense they’d have hauled me down just for spite. They still might, but it’s the best pitch I’ve got. I want you to check into the Westin.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because that’s where I told them you’re staying. I thought you might not want a gang of dicks poking around the Marriott, pumping your roommate for information.”

  “Dicks? Oh, quite. I understand. However—”

  “Let him stay put. You can hire a nurse to sit with him if you’re worried about leaving him alone, but it’s just till the cops are through interviewing you. But keep the room at the Westin and check for messages there. Pack a bag for looks and make the reservation in your name.”

  “I hope I can lie as convincingly as you.”

  It was too hot to tell a lawyer joke. I said I’d be in touch.

  I washed my face and changed shirts. That put back some of the starch, but it wouldn’t last long in that room. I broke a fresh pack out of the carton in the file drawer, locked up, and drove down to the Fox Theater, where I bought a ticket to the matinee in order to use the telephone in the air-conditioned lobby. I asked Joe High School what he had for me.

  “Larry Furlong,” he said. “He retired twelve years ago from the South Lyon Post Office. You’ll find him in Beverly Hills.”

  “Which one, ours or California’s?”

  “He was a civil servant for forty-six years. Which one do you think?”

  I took down the address and telephone number and thanked him.

  “Best way to do that is to forget I’m breathing.”

  The line went dead. I pumped the lever and punched in the number he’d given me.

  “Hello?”

  A voice a long way from young, coarsened as if from disuse and a little louder than necessary.

  “Larry Furlong?”

  “What? Don’t mumble.”

  I shouted it. The college-age ticket-taker came out of a standing doze and frowned in my direction.

  “Pipe down, for cripe’s sake,” came the voice. “I ain’t deef, just a little hard of. You with Detroit Edison?”

  I said I wasn’t.

  “What?”

  I turned my back to the ticket-taker and raised my voice a notch.

  “Too bad. I got sixty pounds of prime beef in a freezer that turned into a hall closet an hour ago.”

  “Is your power out?”

  “Isn’t yours?”

  “No, the storm missed Detroit.”

  “Lucky you. Had lunch?”

  “No, but I’m on a short leash.”

  “Too bad. I can offer you one hell of a steak dinner. What you selling, son? Generators, I hope. I ought to warn you first, though, I’m on a pension.”

  “I’m not selling, Mr. Furlong. I’m looking for information. My name is Amos Walker. I’m an investigator.”

  “I don’t need any holes dug. Not till that meat starts to turn, anyway.”

  “Not excavator, investigator. I’m a private detective.” I coiled the telephone cord into a noose.

  “Oh. Well, nobody calls me Mr. Furlong these days, and I never did answer to Larry. I’ve been Buster my whole life. Detective, you said? What’d I do, come up short on petty cash? Took you long enough to count it. I retired two presidents ago.”

  “It isn’t about the post office. I’m working for your brother Jay.”

  “Isn’t he dead yet?”

  I was getting tired of answering that one.

  “Not yet. It has to do with his will. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t want any part of it. Give my share to the United Fund.”

  Something had gone; the folksy tone. It had burned right off, like a coat of cheap paint on a white-hot stove. What was left was bare iron.

  I gave him the full rundown, all except Furlong’s actual condition and whereabouts. His weak hearing had adjusted to the timbre of my voice and I could talk without drowning out the main feature in the auditorium.

  When I finished he made a noise like two tree limbs mating. He probably called it laughter.

  “So the old buzzard gave up his shot at a pretty young wife just because he thought she was catting around. Well, now he knows what it’s like being alone and old. Tell him I’ll send flowers, but I won’t go to the funeral. I wouldn’t even if I didn’t have the emphysema.” He coughed phlegmily, as if to illustrate the point. “He’ll know why. You won’t have to draw him any pictures.”

  “I understand you haven’t seen each other in almost fifty years. I guess you don’t get along.”

  “You guess right, son.”

  I let the silence work on him. Sometimes that’s the advantage of using the telephone. Dead air makes some people nervous. Buster Furlong was one of them. Or maybe he just wanted to talk.

  “Big-deal architect couldn’t be bothered taking care of his own mother when she got old and sick,” he said. “Let Buster do that, I got buildings to put up.”

  “He said that?”

  “He didn’t have to. Oh, he sent money when he thought about it. I looked after her till it got to be too much, then I put her in a home. Had to. It was just too much for one man. It was a nice enough place if you don’t mind being talked to like you’re still in rompers. She got confused the last couple of years, thought I was Jay half the time. I let her think it. It was like having the family all together.”

  There was a series of rattling coughs, followed by a noise like an engine revving up and then an explosion. He’d spat into a handkerchief or something. “I put off getting married till she was out of the house. By that time I was old myself and so was Trudy.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Cancer took her. We had nine years. Would’ve been twenty if Jay’d pitched in and helped out with Ma. Couple of weeks a year in California might’ve made all the difference to the old lady. Hell, to me, too, not having to fuss over her for a little while. I bet I hinted at it twenty times in letters till Jay stopped answering them and I gave up writing them. Your parents still living, son?”

  “No.”

  “Just as well. Married?”

  “Not now.”

  “Don’t wait too long, that’s my advice. One morning you wake up and you’re old. I don’t recommend it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Like hell you will. But you’ll remember I said it when it happens.”

  “I guess you don’t know who might have had the picture made up.”

  “It sure as hell wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do to him what he did to Ma.”

  “One last question, Mr. Furlong.”

  “Buster.”

  “Does the name Royce Grayling mean anything to you? He’s in politics.”

  “Nope. All I ever knew about politics, or needed to, was when to take down the picture of the old president and put up the new one. And not to tell
jokes about the Kennedys when the Democrats are in office.”

  I wished him luck with the beef.

  “Serves me right for buying more than I’ll live to eat.”

  Another one off the list. I was down to the second and third generations.

  I looked at my watch. Just past noon. If Lund had moved quickly and the police had proceeded at their usual drab but efficient clip, he would be entertaining them at the Westin any time now. As soon as I thought of him I put him out of my head. I didn’t want to put the whammy on him while he was feeding them the lines I’d written. Superstition has its place in the odds.

  I screwed the receiver back into my ear. Unlike the cheesy partitions between the multiplex theaters in the mall, the walls of the grand old Fox were thick enough to absorb sound, but when I leaned against the wall next to the telephone I could feel the vibrations of the space-opera soundtrack on the other side.

  “Yeah?” Hurricane Bob would never learn the proper way to answer a telephone.

  “It’s Walker. Did you deliver that message directly to Arsenault?”

  He described the dead man down to his gabardine.

  “That’s him,” I said. “You got a place to go to beat the heat?”

  He hesitated. “I got an idea you ain’t talking about the weather.”

  “Somebody pumped a slug into Arsenault’s head in the company garage right after you left. The cops have your description. I’ll stand you to a room if you need it, but it has to be way out of town. You know cops and motels.”

  “Moths and porchlights. Don’t need it. Gandy’ll put me up. You know Gandy.”

  Richard Gandolph was the bass player Bob had neglected to include in his record contract; the man who had hired me to save Bob’s life when the music stopped. Gandy and Buster Furlong didn’t live in the same world.

  “Call me if you need anything,” I said. “But don’t leave any messages with the service.”

  “A message is what got me in this hole. But I ain’t blaming nobody.” A solo guitar was playing low on his end, slow and snarly. It might have been one of his old demo tapes. “Say, man, you didn’t, uh—”

  “Arsenault? Not my modus. I have a poison ring.”