The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “You think Woody’s death, and now the girl’s, are related?”

  “The tapes make it look that way. The sheriff’s investigators seemed to think the girl might have been dealing in narcotics, because of some money that was found out at her place. I tend to think something else is behind all of it.”

  He took his time before replying. He turned in his chair and looked out the window some. “I knew this recording existed before you told me about it, Mr. Bragg. Somebody sent me a copy of it, Woody’s session with Hadley. About a month ago. Somebody else thought, as you did, that the Wakefield mentioned on the tape was myself. There was a note with it informing me I would be receiving a telephone call in connection with it. Two days later, I did receive such a call. The caller spoke in a muffled, deep voice. He asked—I assume it was a man—he asked for a one-time payment of ten thousand dollars. He said if I didn’t pay, he would mail other copies of the same tape to various people I know. To the Monterey Herald. To a local radio station which has a rather sensational format. To the secretary of a golf club I belong to. The Monterey Herald, I’m sure, wouldn’t have touched something like that with a ten-foot pole. The person on the phone was just trying to create a climate of fear. But I just laughed at him. Or rather, I feigned a laugh. That was the tack I had decided to take when I received the promised phone call. I told the caller it was my brother on the tape, not myself, and that Hadley had been dead for thirty years. Then I hung up. I never heard from him again.”

  “Did you go to the police?”

  “To what end? No, I didn’t go to the police. Any more than I would be inclined to go to them now, about the copy this woman left for you. The error of my brother wouldn’t affect my standing or reputation in the community, but then—it isn’t the sort of family failing one easily laughs off, either.”

  “Did you talk to Dr. Sommers about it?”

  “No. Why? You think if I had he might be alive now?”

  “Not at all. I just thought you might have been curious about how one of his tapes fell into other hands.”

  “I didn’t even know the tape was his. It could have been army property, for all I knew. Dr. Sommers obviously wouldn’t have been the one to send it to me, since he knew it concerned not me but my brother. No, I just didn’t see any purpose in mentioning it to anybody.”

  “Since that phone call, have you speculated about who might have done it?”

  “Of course. A thing like that isn’t easily dismissed. Jo Sommers came to mind, of course, but I doubted it was her. One would think she would be more sure of her target. I think she would have found out from Woody that I wasn’t the person on the tape.”

  “Have you heard of anybody else in the area who might have received one of Dr. Sommers’s tapes, along with a follow-up extortion call?”

  He hesitated just long enough to color his reply. “No, I haven’t. Do you think that’s why he was killed, then? Somebody thought he was trying to extort money from them?”

  “It’s the only thing that’s turned up so far.”

  “And this woman who was killed today. Since she had two of the tapes, you think her death might have been for the same reason?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I was a fool,” he said quietly. “I should have talked to Woody about this.”

  “But you’re sure, sir, you don’t know anybody else, either here or in some other part of the country, who might have been sent one of the recordings?”

  He got up out of his chair. “No, I do not. And now, Mr. Bragg, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve told you everything I know about the matter.”

  I drove back out of the Valley and pulled into a service station near Highway 1 to use a pay phone. I looked up Billy Carpenter’s number and dialed it. His wife told me he was back out at the fairgrounds, finishing up business to do with the weekend jazz festival. I called around out there and finally found him at the Hunt Club. I told him I wanted to pick his brain, and he said to join him, so I drove over the hill to the fairgrounds and the Hunt Club. Billy was at the bar sipping a Scotch and water. I ordered a cup of coffee, and we went to a table off in a corner.

  He was still wearing his silver-gray 25th Anniversary Jazz Festival golf cap, along with a pair of yellow pants, a pink polo shirt and a white windbreaker.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  Billy and I have known each other ever since I used to work for the Chronicle. I dove right in. “I have a tough request. I might have a handle on the reason Doc Sommers was killed. It’s possible somebody thought Doc was trying to extort money from them. Somebody did try to extort money from at least one person around here. The extortionist wasn’t Sommers, but it was somebody using some compromising information Sommers had tape recorded during his psychiatric career. It involved a military matter. Then, there was a young woman murdered down in Big Sur this afternoon. She had some of this same information and might have been a part of the extortion plot. She wanted to talk to me about something, but she was dead before I caught up with her.”

  Billy Carpenter blinked at me, emptied the Scotch and signaled the cocktail waitress for another. “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly.

  “The tough request is, can you give me the name or names of anybody else around here who might have been approached in the same manner. Somebody who might have some dark corner in their past, and who was threatened with having that darkness tossed on the table for everyone to look at.”

  I had to wait a little too long for his reply. “You’ve heard something, haven’t you, William?”

  “Oh, yeah, but jeez, Pete. This is tough, like you said. Are you sure this is the reason Sommers was killed?”

  “No, of course not. But the sheriff and D.A. might think so.”

  “Not Thackery,” Billy said quietly.

  The waitress brought him his fresh Scotch. I paid for it. “Why not Thackery?”

  “He’s sort of one of the, oh, group, you might say.”

  “What group?”

  “You know. That clique of people you find anywhere. The network. The people who count. Who play golf together and do business together and arrange things the way they think things should be arranged. Around here it’s various community figures and any number of people who are retired military.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re telling me Thackery might want to tag Jo Sommers for her husband’s death just to protect somebody in this clique of community-spirited citizens?”

  “I didn’t exactly say that.”

  “No, you didn’t exactly. Okay, forget about Thackery. But you have heard something about extortion and Sommers.”

  “Merely a whisper. A hint. A cryptic suggestion on a seventeenth fairway one day.”

  “And a name to go with it.”

  “And a name to go with it,” he admitted.

  “When you heard that somebody had scragged the good doctor, didn’t it ring any bells inside that quick newsie’s mind of yours?”

  “Honestly, it didn’t, Pete. Okay, here’s what happened. I heard this rumor, like I said.”

  “What was the rumor?”

  “That a certain individual who one time had consulted Woody Sommers in a professional capacity, had received an anonymous message saying if he didn’t pony up five grand, certain information of a dubious nature in his background would be plastered all over the greater Monterey Bay area to the individual’s acute embarrassment. The second part of the rumor was that the information in this individual’s background had prompted the consultation in the past with Doc Sommers. That was the whole of it.”

  “Did it go anywhere from there?”

  “After much anguish and indecision, I myself went somewhere from there with it. I went out to the Sommers home and told Doc about the rumor I’d heard, and point-blank asked him if he was behind it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He damn near threw me out on my ear. I’ve never seen a man so angry. He finally cooled off and brought out the bottle and we talked about it some. H
e said because of the nature of the incident in that particular individual’s background, there would have been dozens of people who knew about it. It also was a service-connected event. The odds were pretty good that somebody who was familiar with the event in the past might know somebody living in this area and could have passed along that particularly nasty bit of information to the local party.”

  “But did he admit he had that same information on tape?”

  “Yes, but he said he had a coding system that would keep anybody from telling what tape might be associated with any given patient. Anyway, he was convincing enough about the information not having come from him that I never even thought about the golf course rumor again, until you brought it up just now.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “To tell you the truth, what did cross my mind was that somebody might have whacked Doc Sommers because of those models he has on the fireplace mantel in his den.”

  “I remember seeing those. What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re related to patient problems he’s had in the past. He told me one time they represent some of his biggest wins and biggest failures during his career. You remember seeing the one of a machine gun? With its barrel pointed toward the ground?”

  “Yes.”

  “That represents an incident in the life of a man who now is in a position of prominence with the current adminstration in Washington. The man had been a young marine on Guadalcanal in World War Two. He and a couple of other boys were manning a machine-gun position near a river crossing on a night the Japanese launched a big attack. They killed a lot of the enemy, but eventually the position was overrun. His two buddies were killed, but the patient squirmed beneath their bodies and lay doggo. He survived by staying that way for the rest of the night and the whole next day. He extricated himself from the other bodies after dark the following night and made his way back to his unit. He was never able to sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time after that, until Woody went to work on him. Sort of made him a whole man again.

  “Well, that’s what those models are all about,” Billy continued. “Those were the patients he used to think about in later years. He said that putting the models together helped exorcise his own mind of some of the raw memories of what those various men had been through. Which, I’m sure, is all he meant by them. Only Jesus Christ, he should have put them away in a box somewhere when he had people over.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Some of those models represent trauma that was suffered by men now living here, that’s why. He told me so. And I had to ask myself one time: Can you imagine what it would be like to pop into the den at Doc Sommers’s place for a friendly drink, and see there on the fireplace mantel a depiction of something connected with the most traumatic experience of your life?”

  ELEVEN

  Billy finally gave me the name of the man who’d been whispered about on the seventeenth fairway of one of the local golf courses. I practically had to get down on my knees and make the sign of the cross while vowing I wouldn’t disclose my source, but in the end he gave me the name. It was Lawrence Pitt, one of the men he’d introduced me to at the Hunt Club Friday night, and one of the men in a navy uniform I’d seen at the Wakefield party on Saturday. Wakefield had told me he’d been a destroyer skipper. Billy also gave me his address. It was back over in Carmel, in that neighborhood of well-appointed residences not far from the General Stilwell home. I didn’t know if I’d catch Pitt in, but I decided to drive on over and arrive on his doorstep cold. I figured a frontal assault was the only way I might get the information from him that I needed. I didn’t want to phone ahead and have him wondering about what I was after.

  The yard of his home was bordered by a six-foot-high fence of redwood that over the years had weathered to gray. He had a broad front yard of well-tended grass and neatly trimmed shrubbery. The house itself had a wooden shiplap exterior painted a light tan color with black trim. A garage big enough for a couple of large cars was attached to the house.

  Pitt himself answered my ring. He was wearing blue jogging pants and a white T-shirt. I hadn’t noticed his barrel chest before. He looked like a tough little Popeye-the-sailor-man, only with a crewcut. He recognized me, but I still reminded him who I was and where we’d met. He didn’t make any sweeping, welcoming gesture. He stood his ground at the partially open front door.

  “At the request of Mrs. Sommers, I’m working with the Monterey sheriff’s office on her husband’s death,” I told him. “From conversations I’ve had with other people, I believe you might be able to help me out some. I know it’s an awkward time to call on you, but if you could spare me a few minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

  He didn’t budge. You’d think I was an encyclopedia salesman.

  “How could I help?” he wanted to know.

  I glanced off left and right, as if the neighborhood had ears. Most neighborhoods do. “It would be better if we had a bit of privacy, sir. If you don’t want me in your house, maybe you could come sit in my car for a couple of minutes.”

  He finally relented and opened the door. I stepped inside and glanced around. This was a family home. Comfortable, warm and cheerful. Family pictures on the walls. Books and magazines scattered about. He pointed me toward a sofa upholstered with a brown-and-yellow-patterned material. He sat in a well-used leather chair nearby.

  “We won’t be disturbing anybody?” I asked.

  “Only me,” he said with a little bristle to it. “Everybody else is out for the evening.”

  I cleared my throat and leaped right in. “I have spoken to two people today who told me somebody in this area has had access to information imparted to Dr. Sommers during his professional psychiatric career. I have been told this information has been used in extortion attempts on various other persons who live in the area. This information apparently was gleaned from private tape recordings Dr. Sommers made in the course of his work.”

  Pitt was on his feet. “Get out.”

  I got up reluctantly. “Please hear me out, sir. There was a young woman living at Big Sur who…”

  He didn’t want to hear about it. I could tell that when he threw a quick jab at my chin. He had a short reach, and I was able to see it coming in time to pop back my head and avoid the worst of it, but his knuckles glanced off my lower lip and drew a little blood. I took a backward step toward the door, but then braced myself with my hands raised, so he knew if he came at me again he could expect some resistance. Maybe a broken lamp or two and some knocked-about furniture.

  “There was a young woman living at Big Sur I think might have been a part of all this who was shot through the head this afternoon,” I continued.

  He hadn’t decided on his next move yet, but that took some of the wind out of him.

  “Her name was Nikki Scarborough, and this last weekend she had a pottery stall at the jazz festival. She talked to me earlier today by phone. She was frightened and wanted to see me. By the time I got to her she was dead.”

  He was staring at me with his mouth in a circle like he was getting ready to whistle.

  “Did you know her?” I asked.

  “No. No, I didn’t. But I knew who she was. Is she the one you wanted to ask me about?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid not.”

  His eyes flared briefly, but then he accepted it. “I’m sorry for swinging at you,” he told me. “Sit back down.”

  I went back to the sofa. “I might have done the same, in your position,” I told him. “This is an ugly bit of business I’ve found myself in. I don’t want to cause anybody unnecessary pain, but I do want to find out who killed Dr. Sommers. I think there’s a good chance the same person killed the woman today. I think there’s a good chance there might be more killings. You might be able to help me prevent that.”

  “How?” He was back in the leather chair.

  “If you have the stomach to kill somebody, and only need a motive, extortion might do. It might be the reason somebody killed Dr. Sommers Frida
y night, and that girl this afternoon. Earlier today I spoke with a man who was one of the intended extortion victims. I spoke to another man who had heard a rumor about these extortion attempts weeks ago. He had dismissed them since then for what they were, just rumors. But your name, Mr. Pitt, was a part of the rumor. And if somebody did make contact with you in an extortion attempt, successful or not, I would like to hear about it. I don’t want to know about your past, or what might have made anybody think there was something you’d done that you’d like to keep buried. I’m interested only in the mechanics of any extoriton attempt. How they got in touch with you. What they told you to do. What you did do, in return.”

  We just stared at each other while he made up his mind.

  “What if I told you?” he asked. “You said you were working with the sheriff’s office. You’d have to share your information with them, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not unless you’re the one who’s been killing people around here.”

  “I did not kill Dr. Sommers,” he said quietly. “And I certainly did not kill that girl this afternoon. But I still don’t know you well enough to trust you not to share anything I might tell you with the sheriff or the local newspaper or anybody else who might strike your fancy.”

  “I’m a stranger,” I acknowledged. “But something else I am as well is, I’m a pretty good private investigator. And the only way you get to be a pretty good private cop is by learning when to talk and when to keep your mouth shut. I figure this is one of the times to keep my mouth shut, until I find the killer, no matter what the Department of Consumer Affairs might think.”

  “Consumer Affairs? What do they have to do with anything?”

  “In this state, they’re the ones who hand out P.I. licenses.”