One Good Deed

by David Baldacci

  “Suit yourself.”

  Archer climbed out and the squad car drove off fast, trailing vortices of fresh dust in its wake. The recent rains had done nothing apparently to diminish that physical element of life around here.

  Archer turned and faced the Tuttle house, which held no signs of life or light.

  He walked around the place and noted that there was no activity in the adjacent fields. This was not surprising. It was getting on to supper time now as the sun faded into the horizon. Maybe with the man dead, all operations on the farm had ceased.

  A few minutes later, in the outbuilding, Archer shone his light on the odd-looking piece of farm equipment. It was the corn picker he’d seen before.

  Maybe this was the thing that Isabel had fallen to her death on. It had four sharp-edged, cone-shaped pods. They were all facing downward. The woman couldn’t have been impaled on one of these things if they’d been pointed like that. From his time in the military he was familiar with lots of different pieces of machinery, and Archer quickly figured out how the thing worked. He gripped a handle and started to turn it. It was damn tough going and took a lot of his strength. But one of the cones started lifting upward. He stopped, panting slightly, when the cone was finally pointing straight up.

  So that was how the woman had died.

  He next ventured to the barn and climbed the ladder to the top landing. He went over to the hay bale doors and opened them. He eyed the winch used to haul bales up. Then he looked down and imagined the corn picker with the upturned cone on the ground directly underneath. And then he visualized Isabel Tuttle falling to her death, impaled on the damn thing.

  And then Jackie finding her like that.

  He thought about what Lucas Tuttle had told him about his daughter. And his dead wife. That they were both fiercely independent. Hot-headed. That he was scared of them. That mother and daughter had clashed repeatedly. And, that Isabel Tuttle’s death might not have been an accident.

  Well, I don’t think it was an accident, either.

  He suddenly had the awful vision of the woman falling to her death and Jackie being behind where her mother had stood, her arms stretched out after pushing Isabel to her death.

  He felt a bit sick at that. Maybe more than a bit. But then something occurred to Archer. He was putting two and two together, like Shaw had taught him to do. But he needed to go further on that than he just had. He turned his head and looked in the direction of the outbuilding he’d just been in. After a few moments of thought, Archer smiled. Perhaps in relief. But it was a genuine feeling, that was for sure.

  He returned to the home’s front door and took out his knife, only this time it failed its mission. Undeterred, he moved over to a window, forced the latch back, and climbed through.

  He walked down the hall and saw an open door.

  He edged inside and shone his Ray-O-Vac around.

  It was set up as a small office. Dead center on the desk was a typewriter. And next to that was a pair of earphones that were plugged into a little machine.

  He assumed this had to be Desiree Lankford’s office, where she did her typing.

  He checked the wastebasket and then looked through the drawers. There were files and copies of correspondence and a small notebook. He looked inside it.

  Under the T’s was Jackie Tuttle’s name and her address on Eldorado and her phone number. That was interesting.

  There was a little roll of tape next to the machine Desiree used to listen to Tuttle’s dictation. He put it in the machine, figured out how it worked, and turned it on, listening to what was on the tape by slipping on the earphones.

  Though he should have been expecting it, he nearly jumped when Lucas Tuttle’s voice came on.

  “To Sam Malloy, Attorney-at-Law. Dear Sam, Now that I’ve changed my will, disinheriting my traitorous and worthless daughter, and with all this new money coming in, I want to make a few more changes to everything. I would like you to come by next Friday to discuss them. Let me know a good time for you. Sincerely, Lucas Tuttle.” There was a pause and the man next dictated a few other short business letters to various people.

  The recording left off at that point and Archer tipped his hat back. So the old man had cut out his daughter. That explained a lot, but not in a good way for Jackie.

  He pocketed the tape, left the room, moved down the hall to Tuttle’s office, and opened the door.

  Inside he once more shone his Ray-O-Vac light around.

  There was some blood on the desktop, from where Tuttle had been shot. He next examined the console where the revolvers still lay side by side.

  Archer walked over to the safe and swung open the door. It was indeed empty. He noted twin holes drilled into the door. The locksmith’s doing, he figured. He next shone his light on some framed pictures lined up on the mantel. He had seen them on his prior visit here but couldn’t make out who was in them. There wasn’t a single picture of Isabel or Jackie.

  Archer noted the large plant in a vase on a stand next to the fireplace. He had seen it before but paid it no attention. He poked around it and then shone his light behind the broad leaves of the plant. The light beam reflected off the glass. He pulled out the object that had been placed right behind the vase. It was a framed photo. Why would Tuttle have hidden this back there? When Archer looked at the photo, he thought he had his answer.

  There were two men in the photo.

  One was Lucas Tuttle. The other was Malcolm Draper.

  What in the hell?

  He slid the frame into his jacket pocket, stepped back, and looked over at the desk. There was nothing of particular importance on it except for the bloodstains. There were some on the floor, too, where the man had fallen. Archer looked through the drawers and wastebasket and came up empty. He figured Shaw had been all over this room anyway. But maybe he had missed something else besides the photo of the two men. Archer pulled out the drawers again and checked not in the drawers, but under them.

  He found nothing.

  He perched on the desk and his eyes alighted on the Remington over-under leaning against the fireplace stone. He picked it up, broke the breech, and saw that there were no shells inside. Then he turned it around and shone his light down the one barrel where he had previously seen something strange. There was definitely an object hidden in there.

  He used a letter opener on the desk to work the item from the barrel. It was a curled-up piece of onionskin, a carbon copy of a typed letter. He uncurled it and started reading. It was from Tuttle and was addressed to Poca City’s district attorney, a Mr. Herbert Brooks. As he read down the letter, Archer’s insides turned to putty.

  That son of a bitch.

  He put the letter in his pocket. Well, at least the damn shotgun had been good for something.

  He glanced at the device on the desk.

  A Dictaphone, Tuttle had called it. The little receiver he had been holding when Archer had walked in here previously was lying on the desk, its squiggly cord attached to the machine.

  As Archer kept staring at the thing, the image of Shaw’s recording their talk at the police station popped into his head. He shone his light on the machine and, as he had with Desiree’s machine, he quickly figured out the functions of the buttons.

  He hit one and heard a whirring sound coming from within the innards of the Dictaphone as the tape rewound fully. He also saw that the thing you spoke into had a little button that you held down, presumably when you were speaking into it. There was also a little catch that you could engage. This kept the speaking button down without having to use your thumb the whole time. Archer saw that this catch had indeed been set, keeping the button down.

  When the tape stopped rewinding, he pressed another button. The whirring sound took up once more.

  He flinched, as the dead man’s voice suddenly filled the room.

  He was dictating more letters to various people, methodically, without pause. Then there was a long gap. Then he heard the man say in connection with a let
ter to another gent, “Desiree, depending on how my meeting with Jackie goes tonight, we may have to make arrangements for her to move back in here. I will discuss those details when I return from my business trip next week.” Tuttle went on with some more instructions for the woman, and then the tape fell silent. Archer turned the machine off.

  It appeared that Tuttle had every intention of visiting his daughter that night. So what had happened? The thoughts were catapulting through his head like ack-ack fired at enemy planes. Because on the one hand it seemed that Tuttle was expecting his daughter to move back in. But then there was the letter to Herbert Brooks: What he had communicated in there did not mesh with having his daughter back home. But maybe it did somehow to Lucas Tuttle.

  Desiree had typed up a letter from Tuttle where he had disinherited his daughter. He had a feeling that Desiree had let Jackie know about this. That would explain why Jackie would come here and clean out the safe. Otherwise, she would get nothing.

  Next to the desk, he spied a small wooden box with a handle that the Dictaphone was evidently meant to be stored in. With a sudden thought, he wound up the machine’s electrical cord and slipped it into the box. He wanted to know what Shaw would make of all this.

  Overcome with all that he’d just learned, he eyed the little bar set up against the wall, went over, and poured himself a stiff one. He drank it down, planted his palms on the wood of the bar, hung his head down, and took three long breaths.

  You survived the war, you can damn well survive this, Archer.

  I hope.

  Chapter 44

  HE SET OFF DOWN THE ROAD carrying the wooden case on his hike back to Poca City proper.

  It was a long walk, and the dusk grew into night as he went along. He would put out his thumb whenever a vehicle passed but no one even slowed down. Archer finally thrust out his thumb one more time as the headlights bore down on him. However, he held out no hope the vehicle would stop for him until he heard the gnashing of lowering gears and the slowing of an engine.

  He turned around as the car pulled off onto the shoulder. The passenger’s-side window came down with a jerky motion.

  “Mr. Shaw?”

  The detective was grinning at him through the opening.

  Archer eyed the big Buick. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Drove over to Texas yesterday. Took me near to forever. Just getting back.”

  “Texas? Why?”

  “Get in and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “And I’ll do the same with what I found out.”

  Archer climbed in, and Shaw pulled the big Buick back onto the road.

  “Guess your arm’s okay,” said Archer, noting the sling was gone.

  “Aches a bit, but I’m fine. What’s in the case there?”

  “I’ll show you when we get to town.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you found out first?” said Shaw.

  Archer went through some of what he had learned. But he did leave out the details of the carbon copy letter he had found. He wasn’t certain why he had, but his gut was telling him to keep that to himself.

  “So Jackie and Ernestine Crabtree had something going together?” said Shaw, when Archer was done.

  “That’s right. And they went over to Marjorie Pittleman’s that night. But Marjorie later told me she hadn’t seen Jackie or the money I gave her.”

  “Good catch on the muddy car, Archer. I didn’t see that one and I was staring right at the dang thing. And you think they emptied out the safe that night. Why?”

  In answer, Archer told the detective about the recording where Tuttle had cut his daughter out of his will.

  “That would give her a motive to steal what was in that safe,” said Shaw. “Only how did she get it open? She didn’t have the combination.”

  “No, I think she did.”

  He showed Shaw the slip of paper he’d found in Jackie’s trash.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Sure looks like a safe combo to me.” He eyed Archer proudly. “You did good, son. Damn good. You got the makings of a fine detective.” He paused as he watched Archer frown.

  “What’s wrong?”

  When Archer didn’t answer, Shaw did it for him. “You like these two gals. And you don’t want to see them in trouble?”

  Archer nodded. “You hit it right on the head.”

  “If they broke the law, Archer, nothing you can do about that.”

  “I guess.”

  “So Ernestine has up and gone. And you can’t find Jackie?”

  “I think they’re both gone.” He sat up straighter in his seat and stared out the windshield into the dark. “Now, tell me what you were doing over in Texas.”

  “After you told me what happened with Ernestine’s father, I called a friend of mine at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “The FBI! You mean J. Edgar Hoover and those boys?”

  “I do indeed. Anyway, this buddy of mine is assigned to Amarillo, Texas.”

  “Okay.” Archer took the pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket. “You want one?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Archer shook a pair out, lit one up and passed it to Shaw, and then did the same for himself.

  Shaw rolled down his window and blew his smoke out. “Anyway, I spoke with my buddy and he recalled the case. He phoned a friend of his in the Amarillo Police Department and put me in touch with him. I drove over to Amarillo yesterday shortly after I left you, and I’m just getting back now, like I said. They had a tornado come through there a few a months ago, wrecked half the damn town. Felt like I was back in the war.”

  “Damn. So what’d you find out?”

  “Carson Crabtree was a fine police officer who everybody liked and respected.”

  “Except for the fact that he killed three people.”

  “Hold on, I’m getting to that.” He puffed on his cigarette. “Thing is, those three men? They did have one thing in common.”

  “What was that?”

  “They all knew Ernestine.”

  “And that never came out?”

  “It did, but only after Carson was executed.”

  “Why only then? Didn’t people investigate?”

  “Why would they, Archer? Carson Crabtree confessed to the killings. What was there to investigate?”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, it did come out later when a curious reporter down there did a little digging. One of the men had been caught peeping on women.”

  “That was in that article I told you about.”

  “What you don’t know is that he’d definitely been caught peeping on Ernestine.”

  “Okay. But how does that tie into what happened?”

  “You know young men, Archer, being one yourself. Some think they can do what they want with the fairer sex. They start by peeping, then move on to something a lot worse.”

  Archer shot him a hard look. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “The policeman I was talking to believed that the three men, well, they did things to Ernestine.”

  “You mean…?”

  “They raped her, Archer, or so the man believed. And more than once.”

  “And that’s why Carson Crabtree killed them?”

  “Hell, if somebody did that to my little girl? I know I’m a lawman and all, but so was Carson Crabtree. I might just do what he did.”

  “But if he killed those men, he must’ve known what they did to her. He could have used that to not get electrocuted. Hell, he probably could’ve gotten off completely. You said that yourself.”

  “Now, there’s the interesting part. The theory the man had is that Carson was guilt-ridden because, in his mind, he had failed to protect his daughter. And on top of that, if he used what they had done to his daughter as a defense, it would have to all come out. He probably thought the shame would have ruined her. So he confessed and went to the chair. For her sake.”

  Archer sat back. “I think the man might be right.
Remember the letter in the scrapbook?”

  Shaw nodded and said, “You think her mother knew and she was telling Ernestine not to dwell on it, not to blame herself for what her father did?”

  “I think so. But then Ernestine’s mother killed herself. I guess she couldn’t heed her own advice.” Archer rubbed his brow, tossed his cigarette out the window, and said, “Damn, I need a stiff drink.”

  “I’m with you there, son. Maybe more than one.”

  They drove on to Poca City.

  Chapter 45

  WHO DO YOU THINK killed Lucas Tuttle, then?” asked Shaw, over a glass of Rebel in Archer’s hotel room. “You have any opinions?”

  Archer refilled their tumblers he’d gotten from the hotel to replace the ones Shaw had taken to fingerprint. They’d purchased a cluster of roast beef sandwiches and pickles from a deli and brought them up as their dinner.

  “Ernestine knows her way around a gun. But as far as I know Tuttle didn’t know her. And I don’t want to think she’d do something like that. She’s a sweet gal. But I saw her turn the tables on a parolee coming after her. The lady has a spine of steel.”

  “And she’s done a runner, too,” said Shaw. “Innocent folks don’t tend to do that.”

  “But what I don’t get is, on the tape Tuttle is clearly intending on seeing Jackie that night. Only Jackie said he never showed up at her house.”

  “She could be lying,” noted Shaw.

  “The thing is, Jackie suggested that I go collect the debt. And then she said she’d agree to meet with her father, as a way, I thought, to help me get the money paid. But now I see it was a way for her to get her father out of the house, so she could get what was in that safe.”

  “But how’d she even know it was in there? You only told her after the fact. Remember? She was mad at you for withholding that.”

  Archer eyed the lawman in an amused fashion. “You’re forgetting your own rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t believe anybody without corroboration. But I think I know how. Same way she knew that she’d been cut out of the will.”