The Witchfinder

by Loren D. Estleman

  I glanced at my watch. “She’ll have made her statement by now. It will include how you panicked when I told you Arsenault was ready to crack, and decided to take him down before Furlong found out he was sheltering a fat snake in his bosom and dropped you from the will.”

  “There’s no reason to be insulting.” Lund drew a deep breath and let it out. The pills were taking effect. “You don’t know how much of that sort of thing I’ve had to put up with from Jay all these years. I was just his great waddling eunuch. Good enough to be trusted with his financial and legal affairs because I was too hound-dog loyal ever to consider cheating him, but certainly not his equal; not on a level with the immortal embalmed genius, resting as he was on his half-century-old laurels.

  “None of this is evidence,” he said. “I’m not confessing to any murders, or even inheritance fraud. I’m just telling you what I’d like to have done. There’s no law against that, here or in my native country.”

  I spread open my coat to show him I wasn’t wearing a wire. My shirt was lightweight and he could see through to my undershirt. He shrugged his rounded shoulders.

  “First he threw me the bone of custodianship. My years of loyalty entitled me to far more. Then he threatened to take it away by marrying a woman who wasn’t even born when he made his last significant contribution to his field. He was flaunting his wealth and status—yes, and his heterosexuality—and expecting me to accept it without comment. No, not even that. He never thought about me at all. I was just another design on his drafting board: drawn, built, filed, and forgotten along with all his other creations. Well, this was one design that thought for itself.”

  “How’d you find Millender?”

  “You mean, if I did find him. I told you I’m not confessing to anything. Call it serendipity. I met him in one of those gay singles clubs that were so popular before the plague came along and closed them. The affair didn’t last, but when I found out how he made his money, and that Lynn Arsenault of Imminent Visions was one of his photographic subjects, I started planning. Greta was already in place, a bit of luck. She’d been a legal secretary with my firm in England for four years, and answered the telephone in the Detroit office of Furlong, Belder, and Associates after coming to this country. I arranged that, for old times’ sake. She was grateful, since employment helped her obtain a visa.”

  “Is that why she agreed to apply for a job with Vernon Whiting?”

  “Partly. The position also paid better and she had more responsibility. At the time it was just a ploy to ingratiate myself further with Jay. The inside information she supplied enabled me to make a number of suggestions that helped Furlong and Belder remain competitive. That was one more of the many services I performed that Jay took for granted.”

  “He wasn’t the only one. Greta must have had a lot on the ball to remain with Imminent Visions this long. Along the way she managed to hand you Lynn Arsenault on a silver tray. Twice. She doesn’t owe you a damn thing.”

  “She always was an accommodating girl.” He played with the prescription bottle, rolling it back and forth between his great soft palms.

  “You must have thought you had God in a box when Grayling capped Nate Millender. Sooner or later he would have put the squeeze on you the way he did Arsenault and others, and Greta might not have been able to help. It’s sort of too bad that’s the very thing that keeps you from pinning Grayling to the murder in Allen Park.”

  “Timing is important. Right now I need as much time as I can get.” He returned the bottle to his pocket. When his hand came back out it was wrapped around the butt of a small nickel-plated automatic.

  Both my hands were on the table, resting on top of the file folder. The .38 was on my hip. I could have gone for it, possibly even had him cold before he could squeeze the trigger of the .22 he had used on Lynn Arsenault. I had all the experience in the world over him when it came to getting a gun out into the air and firing it.

  I didn’t move. “No good, Windy. I called the Detroit and Allen Park Police Departments after I called you. They’ve had plenty of time to seal all the exits.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Keep your hands on the table.” He rose. He had the pistol in his right hand, clamped against his side. The great bulk of his body concealed it from the other diners as he picked up his cane. “Awfully un-British of me to stick you with the check, old man. But I’m an American now. I ought to start acting like one. If you try to follow me I’ll shoot, and I can’t answer for my aim. Some innocent people might get hurt.”

  I said, “I’ll just stay here and finish my coffee. It’s been a long day, even for Monday.”

  “Do tell Jay I said good-bye. I’m fond of the old boy even if he did treat me like an old fat dog.” He withdrew into a hungry throng of men and women in business suits being led to their tables, swiveling a little to keep me in his field of fire until the crowd closed in behind him. Then he moved swiftly, not leaning on the cane now. His foot wasn’t bothering him nearly as much as he’d let on.

  I was still sitting there drinking coffee when I heard the first shot. It was loud and deep and came from a much bigger bore than Stuart Lund’s .22.

  Thirty-three

  THERE WERE TWO MORE shots, fired a split-second behind the first. By then I was up and moving.

  When I reached the entrance to the coffee shop, the crowd was closing back in after scattering for cover. Someone said something about 911. I saw Stuart Lund’s silver-crooked cane lying on the waxed floor. Then I saw Lund, sprawled a few feet away with Sergeant St. Thomas of the Allen Park Police Department on his knees supporting the attorney’s head. Three separate stains were spreading across the fat man’s white dress shirt. His automatic lay on the floor at his side. The waxy blue eyes were already beginning to lose their sheen.

  St. Thomas looked up at me. “It was Grayling. He took off that way before I could get my gun out.” He pointed down the tunnel toward the stairs to the Fisher Building.

  Just then there was another shot.

  “That’s Redburn,” he said. “I posted him by the stairs.”

  I started that way. My revolver was in my hand. I didn’t remember drawing it.

  “Walker.”

  I looked back at the sergeant just in time to catch his badge folder against my chest. I tucked it into my outside breast pocket on the run with the shield hanging out.

  Officer Redburn was leaning against the wall in the stairwell, gripping his right arm with his left hand. Blood and splinters of bone poked out between his fingers. His Glock dangled at the end of the shattered arm. His round face was blank with pain and shock.

  I bounded up the steps. At the top the wall exploded next to my head. I retreated a step, flattening against the wall. Running footsteps echoed away across the lobby. I flicked bits of Italian marble from my right eye and resumed pursuit.

  The guard at the security desk was just getting up from his seat, staring in the direction of the parking lot. I ran that way.

  “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  I stopped. The revolving door at the end of the arcade was still turning behind a figure spread-eagled against the light. I saw shapely legs beneath a skirt an inch too short for regulations. There was nothing between us but a row of antique automobiles.

  “Me, Lieutenant,” I called out. “Amos Walker.”

  “Walker? Where’d you get the shield?” Mary Ann Thaler lowered her service piece.

  At that moment Royce Grayling stepped out from between the gleaming Packard and the canvas-topped Thomas Flyer and fired at the Felony Homicide lieutenant.

  She had fast reflexes. At the first flash of movement she hit the floor and rolled toward the wall. Grayling’s slug struck sparks off the revolving door frame. The door spun. In the same instant he swung my way.

  He’ll be a little slow turning to his left, Barry Stackpole had said. That second Purple Heart.

  I took aim like an old-time duelist, offering a narrow sideways target as I sighted down my right
arm stretched out at shoulder level. Taking my time. Fill the lungs halfway and hold it. Slow and steady pressure on the trigger. The echo of the .38 joined the others walloping between the marble walls.

  Grayling disappeared behind the Packard.

  There was an echo-filled pause. A squad of uniforms barreled through the revolving door. Thaler, up on one knee in the corner with an elbow propped on her raised thigh and her pistol pointing at the skylight, shouted at them to seek cover. They spread out along both walls.

  “That you, Walker?”

  It was Grayling’s voice. I crouched behind the Ford quadricycle, resting my gun arm across one of the solid-rubber tires, as big as a bicycle wheel. As far as cover went it was as flimsy as a baby carriage.

  “That depends on whether you’re hit,” I called out.

  “What if I’m not?”

  “Then you’re a liar too. You weren’t the only sharpshooter in the Asian theater.”

  “I’ve been hit before. Twice. I’m hard to bring down.” He was breathing heavily, but he might have been faking.

  “No medals this time, Royce,” I said. “You blew your sweet cover.”

  “I guess I don’t like being set up. Not for an amateur job anyway.”

  “How’d you know we were here?”

  “You called downtown for backup. I’ve got friends downtown, remember?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Yeah, well. I was getting tired of this place anyway. No night life.”

  Another chunk of marble burst near the parking-lot exit. One of the uniforms drew back quickly. He’d been inching closer along the wall. Grayling still had the instincts of a jungle guerrilla.

  I said, “Give it up, Royce. You need medical attention, and you’re spoiling a landmark besides.”

  “I never much liked it. I’m a Furlong man myself.” He laughed, coughed. It sounded genuine. He hadn’t long if I’d made a lung shot. If he didn’t move soon he’d drown in his own blood.

  Unless he was faking.

  I tested him.

  “They told me you were a pro. Gunning down a man in front of a couple of dozen witnesses is kid stuff.”

  “Witnesses are a joke.”

  “I don’t hear the cops laughing. You shot one of those too.”

  “You fight dirty, Walker. These cops didn’t know that.”

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  Something growled.

  It sounded like the MGM lion in those acoustics.

  Another growl, and then another, ragged and prolonged. An engine caught. There was a drumroll of pistons and then the long black Packard began to move.

  Gears groaned. Blue exhaust hazed the air. All the time he’d kept me talking he’d been busy hot-wiring the primitive starter.

  The car had been parked at an angle, facing out from the wall. Now it was rolling my way up the arcade, a big beetle-backed sedan nearly as long as a bus, with windwings and blackout headlamps squinted like dragon’s eyes, picking up speed. The door on the passenger’s side flapped shut, but I couldn’t see Grayling through the windshield. He’d be stretched across the front seat, turning the steering wheel from the bottom with his other hand on the foot pedal.

  A gun barked at the end of the arcade. The Packard’s rear window and windshield collapsed in triangular shards of non-shatterproof glass. The car was moving faster now, headed for the lobby. He would have to make a tricky right turn to make the main entrance, but once he’d done that and smashed through to the street there was nothing to stop him as long as he had gas in the tank.

  I made a quick reconnaissance.

  Henry Ford was a simple man. His quadricycle was operated by only two levers, a tall one with a smooth cylindrical handle for steering and a straight one that came up to the driver’s knees. That would be the brake.

  I changed hands on my revolver, grasped the handle of the brake, and shoved it forward.

  The fragile little car began to roll, but not nearly fast enough; the Packard was almost on top of me. I laid the .38 on the floorboards, got a hold of the footboard and the back of the seat, and heaved. The vehicle lurched out into the middle of the corridor and the big sedan rammed into its side.

  But the Packard didn’t stop.

  Its weight and momentum carried the little Ford sideways for ten feet, its solid rubber tires screeching on the highly polished floor. But Grayling was unable to work the clutch and the throttle with just one hand; the engine coughed and died. The juggernaut rolled to a halt.

  The door on the driver’s side flew open. Grayling, gathering his feet beneath him, leaned out and threw down on me with a blue-barreled nine-millimeter automatic in his right hand.

  My gun was on the floor of the quadricycle. I backpedaled, but the wall stopped me. There was no place to go.

  The report was louder than any of the others. I jumped, but not from the impact; a splatter of Royce Grayling’s blood had stung my left eye.

  For an agonizing moment he hung there, one knee on the Packard’s mohair seat, one foot on the floorboards, a shin braced against the steering column. His mouth was working, but nothing was coming out except blood, a lot of it. The entire front of his striped shirt was stained red, but it was the fresher wound that was giving him the most trouble, the great gaping hole where his throat had been. Then his eyes rolled over white and he fell forward. His automatic bounced off the running board and clattered to the floor.

  The aging guard from the security desk stood in the middle of the corridor just this side of the elevators. His feet were spread and he had his arms stretched out in front of him, at the end of which smoked the shiny long-barreled Ruger Blackhawk I’d seen in his hip holster.

  Thirty-four

  A FUEL-GUZZLING JET venerable enough to have starred in Chet Huntley’s coach lounge commercial in 1972 bellied in over the tarmac, touched down with a shriek of rubber, and taxied toward the gates with beads of rain glittering like perspiration on its red-and-white metal skin. The sky had been weeping over the metropolitan area since before dawn, lowering the temperature another ten degrees and putting paid to the hot spell, at least until the next front came through or the fan in my office gave up the ghost. Burning cigarettes with the rest of the lepers in the designated area, I rested my feet on my overnight bag and hoped for a craft built sometime in the present decade. Flying is one of those activities best left to children and that class of adults who are content to let other people make decisions regarding their survival, like Szechuan chefs.

  I’d read up on the latest developments in the Fisher Building demolition derby and turkey shoot, in the loose sections of newspaper laying around the waiting area; why anyone bothered to buy one in an airport was a mystery I wasn’t paid to solve. There was nothing I hadn’t known already, not counting errors and embellishments. USA Today had run a honey of a picture of the wreckage on its front page. When a 1941 Packard runs into an 1896 Ford, it’s national news. My name didn’t appear in the caption.

  I sensed Lily Talbot before I saw her. Walking down the concourse, she turned heads male and female in a kind of personal telegraphy, like an infrared beam tripping breakers. It wasn’t a question of beauty, although she possessed that quality, common enough in the age of liposuction, silicone, collagen, rhinoplasty, and broadening tastes. It was a combination of looks, attitude, and carriage.

  She beat watching the traffic on the runway. Her long pleated skirt, trailing scarf, and boots with three-inch heels drew attention to her unconventional disregard for current fashion, and her short red hair to her long classic skull, like something found among the porcelains in an Egyptian tomb. She walked with her back straight but not rigid, her chin raised but not upthrust, and she maintained a lively artist’s interest in her surroundings that set her apart from the job lot of attractive women who stared through people and things as if they didn’t exist in their dimension. I was on my feet before I thought about getting up.

  We touched hands. She smiled noncommittally and said somethin
g that evaporated in the air. We adjourned to an uninhabited corner by an unused gate, where I ditched my filter in an ashcan. She smelled lightly of lilac. An uncomplicated scent for a complex character.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d get my message,” I said. “Jean Sternhagen said you were out of town.”

  “An art auction in Toledo. When I called in she told me what you told her and I drove right up. You made quite an impression on her.”

  “Chicks dig a bandage.”

  She looked around. “Where is he?”

  “Boarding. His kind of passenger gets on early.”

  “You’re going along?”

  “He paid for my ticket yesterday and hired me to escort him. After what happened he changed his mind about staying in Detroit. L.A.’s his home now. I was just waiting for you.”

  “But you couldn’t be sure I was coming.”

  “People generally do, in the end. Guilt is a waste of time, but it’s stronger than love or hate when it comes to making people do things they don’t want to.”

  “I never said I didn’t. The world isn’t that cut-and-dried.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “I find that surprising, coming from you.”

  “The world’s black and white, good and bad, no matter what you hear. The people who say it isn’t have already chosen black.”

  “You seem pretty sure of your philosophy.”

  “It’s a philosophy.”

  “Could I see him?”

  “I’ll ask.”

  I went over and talked with the clerk at the counter, an unbruised twenty under all the varnish and peroxide. When I got back, Lily was looking out the window. A Tinkertown train was hauling baggage around the tail section of the plane parked at the gate.

  “She’s checking,” I said. “Just in case you smuggled an atomic device past security.”

  “Thank you.” She leaned a shoulder against the glass. “I was too busy framing bids to follow the news. Bids I never got to enter because of your message. Jean’s information was sketchy and the car radio had it all garbled. What happened?”