by Jack Lynch
“Maybe you two should think about having dinner together,” said Jessica, handing me a glass of water.
I grunted and threw back some more aspirin. Liz still had a coy smile on her face when a hand that sounded heavy and official banged on the front screen door. Jessica got up to go answer it and I heard the sergeant’s voice. I decided to put the smiling girl next to me a bit on alert. Nobody said I had to be a total bastard about things.
“Afraid there’s some bad news coming for you,” I said.
She sobered immediately. “What?”
Jessica led Findley into the kitchen just then, asking him if he wanted some iced tea.
“No thank you, Jessica. This isn’t exactly a social call. Hack around?”
“No, he’s out running errands.”
I twisted around in my chair some. “Hack Carson? The coach?”
Jessica grinned. “Yup. He’s the father of all those red-haired little critters you hear out back.”
“Jessica,” Liz said quietly. “Mr. Bragg here said there was some bad news. What sort of bad news, Mr. Bragg?”
Now it was time for Findley and me to exchange glances. The sergeant turned his hat in his hand for a moment. “Jessica, maybe you could go out with your kids for a couple of minutes. We’d like to talk to Liz.”
“No. If there’s trouble I’d like to hear about it too. Liz and I are friends.”
Findley looked at me. “You or me?” he asked.
I got up and went over to lean against the refrigerator. “Why not me? I was there.”
The sergeant nodded, and I turned back toward Liz. She had a wary expression.
“I had a picnic earlier today with Angel,” I told her. “We were out on that little island in Lake Appleton. There were some things bothering her, and she wanted to tell somebody about them. They were things of a nature she didn’t think she could tell to just anybody. There were reasons why she felt she couldn’t go to somebody like Sergeant Findley here, but I guess she figured I would do okay as a substitute.”
The girl at the table looked down at her hands. “What sort of things?”
“She told me that the afternoon J. D. Cornell was killed, she saw you and Buddy Bancetti together out on that same island.”
She didn’t react at all. She kept her eyes lowered, and she didn’t deny it.
“She said she saw you from the shore when the two of you sported around in the water some. From that distance, I guess it would be pretty hard for a girl to mistake her own sister for somebody else.”
“I guess,” Liz said quietly.
Findley opened his mouth to say something but I gave him a warning glance. Jessica made a little lifting movement of her extended stomach and sat back down at the table.
“The sergeant here and I got a statement a little bit ago from Buddy. He pretty much confirmed your sister’s story. Said the two of you spent a pretty long afternoon, and he was all beered up by the time you got back to shore. Said he dozed some on the drive back into town.”
The girl lifted her eyes some and swallowed. “I would never have let anything bad happen to that boy,” Liz said in a voice you had to strain to hear.
“He’s already spent a couple of weeks in county jail. You figure that’s a jolly experience of some sort?”
“I didn’t realize…” She swallowed again. “I didn’t realize that was the afternoon of the killing.”
It was lame and she knew it. Findley couldn’t help himself this time. “Aw, Liz,” he said quietly.
“I would have told you,” Liz said in a little stronger voice. She was looking at her hands again. “I mean, if there was going to be a trial or something, I would have, I guess, come forward is the term they use. I would have told folks I was with him.”
“Why haven’t you told somebody before now?” I asked quietly.
“I had my reasons.”
Jessica framed her face in her large hands. “Oh, Liz, honey…”
“Angel told me something else,” I said to Liz. “She said you have a boyfriend, a steady fellow nobody knows about.”
The girl’s head snapped up at that one. “She’s a liar!”
“I don’t think so. She’d just worked out some things in her own mind. And the statement Buddy Bancetti gave us made sense of it, just the way Angel had figured it out. Buddy said he wasn’t thinking about his wallet when the two of you left the island that day. And he said after going into the water he’d put his undershorts out to dry, only by the time the two of you left there, he’d forgotten about them. Yet when the sheriff’s men found Cornell’s body, they also found Buddy’s wallet and what they took to be his skivvies there. Your sister had a pretty strong hunch it was your boyfriend who killed Cornell and planted Buddy’s items there. It frightened her. That’s why she wanted to talk to somebody like me. Who’s the boyfriend, Liz?”
She put her head between her hands and wagged it back and forth. She wasn’t crying. She just couldn’t think of what to do. I glanced across at Findley. The sergeant looked as if he’d eaten something that had given him a sour stomach, but he made a little nod, telling me to finish it.
“The worst is yet to come, Liz.”
She quit wagging her head, but she didn’t lift her face. I leaned a little in her direction. “Liz, it turned out Angel was right in being scared of things. Of knowing what she knew and what she suspected.”
Nobody moved. It seemed as if we all had quit breathing, even. The children had moved away from the house. Their shrill voices drifted in from a distance.
“Something bad happened out at the lake when Angel and I were coming back into shore.”
The girl dropped her hands and stared up at me.
“The reason I’m limping is because somebody shot at us. They hit me in the leg. Angel wasn’t so lucky.”
Jessica gasped. Liz opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.
“Your sister stood up in the back of the rowboat just before we touched shore. She was hit by the first bullet somebody up in the hills fired at us. It killed your sister.”
There was another moment’s silence, then Liz seemed to shake off something. She even smiled. It twisted something inside my stomach.
“No, you’re lying to me now,” she told me.
She looked across the room at Findley. “It’s a trick, isn’t it, Sergeant? You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you?”
Findley gave a curt shake of his head.
“Oh, my God,” said Jessica.
“Say, by the way,” Liz continued, in a loud, braying sort of voice. “If you think I’ve done something wrong, aren’t you supposed to read me my rights or something? Let me get a lawyer if I want?” She turned in her chair. “See, Jessica, there’s nothing to worry about. They’re just trying to pull something.”
“Liz,” I said quietly, “Angel is dead. She was shot once through the chest.”
I think she began to believe it then. The wind seemed to go out of her, and her shoulders sagged the same way they had when she’d come into Kelsey’s the night before. Findley cleared his throat.
“Liz, I think you’d better come down to the office with me. This time I’ll be asking the questions, but first, I’ll read you your rights and you can call an attorney if you want. But Mr. Bragg was telling the truth. Somebody shot and killed Angel. And I’ve got to ask you about some things.”
The girl stared blankly a moment, then nodded and got to her feet. We made a very quiet procession through the house and were just stepping outside when a pickup truck came down the road and slowed, just momentarily, then sped up and continued past the house.
“Hack?” said Jessica, staring after the truck. “Well, whatever…”
Findley frowned.
“Mrs. Carson,” I said, “when you came in last night at Kelsey’s, you were looking for your husband. When he finally showed up, did he look as if he might have been in a fight?”
“Well…”
“Does he own a ski mask, Mrs. Carson?”
>
“He skis,” said the big woman, not understanding what it was I was asking.
“Don’t say anything, Jessica.”
That from Liz.
“Does your husband own a rifle?” I continued.
“Well, sure…”
“Jessica, shut up!” Liz cried.
“But everyone does around here,” said the pregnant woman.
“Findley,” I yelled, scuttling down the stairs, “that’s him!”
SIXTEEN
I didn’t wait to see if the sergeant got the message, or if he believed it even or what he planned to do about it. For the moment it was enough that I felt a certainty that Hack Carson was Liz Reynolds’s lover and the purposeful killer of J. D. Cornell and maybe the accidental killer of Angel Reynolds, but most certainly the would-be killer of Peter Bragg, and he was Buddy Bancetti’s ticket out of the county jail and the subsequent key to everything going on down at San Quentin, and he was streaking up the road toward the freeway to Reno with a rifle hanging from one of those carrying racks over the rear window of the truck cab. I always thought those truck racks with the rifles in them were a little ostentatious, myself. Something that somebody a little unsure of themselves might have, same as the fellows in flamenco dance groups who wear codpieces. In Hack Carson’s case it was just plain dumb, because chances were pretty good that it was the rifle that was going to send the coach to prison and leave his pregnant wife with all those kids up a creek without a paddle. It wasn’t pretty to contemplate and I wondered what would prompt a man to take that sort of gamble.
And I couldn’t figure out the coach’s reasoning at that very moment. I was getting closer to him. On the highway I’d catch up to him with no trouble. He should have headed for the hills, where his vehicle could outperform mine. I was close enough to him now to read his license-plate number, and he had to slow even more to make the cloverleaf loop onto the freeway, ignoring a stop sign on his way. I was close behind, ignored the same stop sign and almost hit a large recreational vehicle. Luckily it was moving slowly enough so I avoided it, but I did manage to nicely scare the bejesus out of the people inside. I floored the accelerator as we shot onto Interstate 80, leaving a trail of honking indignation from the RV in our wake.
Carson stayed in the far right lane, and I started to move up alongside the truck. I was planning to get in front of him and hit my brakes, too close for him to move away on either side. He would have to slow and stop or try going through me and the Cadillac. I figured drat either way, we’d end up together stopped alongside the highway. But before that brilliant plan could be put into effect he shot off at the next highway exit, and I saw what he was doing just in time to veer after him without missing the off ramp and destroying myself.
We went through another stop-signed intersection, and now I could tell that Carson was probably trying to do what he should have been doing earlier. He was heading for the hills. Within a couple of minutes we were on a pitted, secondary road climbing away from the freeway route. I figured it probably was going to lead to a dirt trail of the sort that would exact a toll from my own car and let him pull away, but until that happened I intended to play as dirty as I could in an attempt to rattle him. I stayed on his tail, and from time to time banged him with my front bumper. Once when the opportunity presented itself, I shot up alongside and bounced against the side of his vehicle some. His truck was a small quarter-ton job, one of the Japanese imports. It was about as small a pickup truck as you could buy. I was driving big American. It used more gas and was at least as heavy as the pickup, and that’s why I could play run and bump, and from the look on his face successfully jangle Hack Carson with my vulgar driving.
I backed off a time or two and took a couple of quicker runs at his rear bumper, jolting him hard. He fishtailed some and the next minute he broke off to the right side of the road and started to climb the grassy slope above us. I figured I had to stop him now or I’d lose him, at least for the time being, and time was something I didn’t want to lose more of. In a last big surge I was able to pull up to his left front quarter and ram him hard enough to knock his vehicle out of control. I roared past him as his rear end slued around to the left in a circle until he was headed back downhill. I spun my own car down to head him off from trying to turn uphill again, only it wasn’t necessary. Hack lost all control and the truck spun to a stop with tires smoking. He was grappling with the gun rack behind him when I slammed the Caddy into the passenger side of the truck, bouncing him around enough so I could scramble out of the car. I felt something give way around my leg wound, but there was no stopping now. It was go-for-the-throat time and I dragged myself around the corner of the truck bed with my .38 in hand. I got to the cab as he was pulling the rifle off the rack. I stuck my own gun barrel through the open window and laid it alongside his neck.
“No more rifle, coach. You’ve used that enough for one day, I suspect.”
He went totally to pieces then. He sagged across the steering wheel and began bawling. He knew just how it was going to go now, and he probably was thinking of the pregnant Jessica and the kids and the mortgage on the house and the respected career in the community, and he was crying his eyes out.
All I could think about was Angel Reynolds bleeding her life away in the shallow waters of Lake Appleton. I jerked him out of the cab and grabbed the keys out of the truck ignition and the rifle off the seat. I ordered him back around to the rear of my own car while I opened a door and threw the rifle onto the front seat. I unlocked the car trunk where I had my suitcase and various emergency equipment like a trail bag and hiking boots and a lot of this and that, and told Hack Carson to get all that stuff out and throw it into the backseat. He’d transferred the suitcase and a couple of other things before he got a glimmer of what I had in mind. He hesitated next to the open trunk lid. Even though his face was still screwed up at the grief come to visit, he hesitated and stared at me.
“Hey, what do you think…?”
Blam!
I fired a round that thudded into the dirt about a half an inch from his toes. I don’t know if I wanted to place it there or through his foot. It didn’t matter at all to me where it went. It ended our conversation and he quickly finished transferring stuff into the back of the car, then I gestured with a .38 caliber Marine Corps Colt Combat Masterpiece and Hack Carson climbed into the trunk, and I slammed down the lid after him and drove back down to Claireborn.
A deputy sheriff’s wagon with flashing lights picked me up just as I left I-80. I hoped that Findley had told him I was the good guy. I made a circular “okay” sign with thumb and middle finger of my left hand and continued on. The deputy turned off his flashers and followed me back into town. I pulled up outside the county courthouse. The deputy must have radioed ahead. Sergeant Findley was waiting out at the curb when I pulled up. When I opened the car door I noticed fresh blood on my pants leg. The leg itself felt numb.
“What happened?” Findley asked.
I hobbled round back and unlocked the trunk lid. “This happened,” I told him. “I think he’s a man of remorse who might tell you a thing or two. If he doesn’t, you can check out his rifle. It’s in the front seat.
Hack Carson climbed out of the trunk. He wasn’t ready to look anybody in the face. The deputy who’d trailed me into town took him in tow.
“Your deputies recover anything from the shooting site?”
Findley just stared at Carson a moment. He had a funny look on his face. “We recovered shell casings from just off that road where you figured the shooting came from, and we have some slugs in nearly perfect condition we found in the water near the end of the dock where you said you tried to shield the girl. If that’s the weapon you have there, we’ll know after firing it on the target range.”
“No need to go to all that bother,” Carson said, staring at the pavement. He was crying again.
Findley motioned for the deputy to take him inside.
“Sounds like he’s going to babble all about it,”
I said.
“Probably will,” Findley told me with a flinty look. “Liz Reynolds did, on the way back into town, once I convinced her Angel was dead. These aren’t exactly a couple of seasoned criminals you turned up, Bragg. They’re just local people who made an awful mistake or two.”
“Oh, Christ, Findley, put away the violin. That’s all anybody is the first time they do something like this. It’s the why of it I’d like to know about, but I’m not even going to hang around to find that out. Can I get Buddy Bancetti now?”
“He’s being processed out right now. Soon as Liz admitted tossing the youngster’s shorts and wallet out as she drove past the Cornell place that afternoon, I called the assistant D.A. and he signed the necessary forms. We’ll probably be taking Liz Reynolds out there in his place in a little while.”
“And probably the coach.”
Findley deliberately spat on the pavement nearby. More nearby me than nearby him. “And probably the coach.”
Small towns. Bah. I drove to the local hospital to buy a pint of blood and have my wound patched up again, but first I used a pay phone to call Aggie Leland and ask if she’d hold hands with Buddy Bancetti while I ran him down to San Quentin. When I told her I’d sprung the Bancetti boy she gave a whoop over the phone that damaged my eardrum. When I could hear again she’d decided to forgive whatever shortcomings the boy and I had and said she’d go along. I asked if she had a car. She said she’d been using Buddy’s while he was behind bars. I suggested she run out to the jail and collect him and take him home so he could change or whatever and that she could do the same and I’d be by to get them a little later. She gave another whoop but I was holding the receiver away from my ear this time. Then I went in to get my leg attended to. I’d run out of pants. I’d just have to drive back bloody.
While they did the things they had to do, along with trying to talk me into renting one of their beds overnight, I tried to pull the rambling pieces of everything together in my mind. There still were gaping holes. Assuming Hack Carson was the killer of J. D. Cornell, I could figure out why he might feel that Angel or I or the both of us could be a threat, and take a couple of shots at us. It was why he brained Cornell I couldn’t figure out. And why he and poor old slave-away, slope-shouldered, husband-stealing or at the very least husband-borrowing Liz Reynolds decided to hang the responsibility on Buddy Bancetti. At least temporarily, if you could believe Liz when she said she would have come forward in time to keep the boy out of prison.