by Gwen Moffat
She had slept the clock round and was flown in a police helicopter to Calcine. Now she was alone with Stuart and a tape recorder and trying to marshal her thoughts.
‘I had to ask him questions,’ she said, ‘but he was in no pain. Frightened, yes, when I proposed leaving him. He thought it was getting dark so I knew he had only a few minutes left. He answered the question then, rather than be left to the pumas. Do we start with Janice? That was how it all began, more or less.’
‘More or less?’ He was not recording this.
‘It began before Brewer and Doyle came to Sweetwater—’
‘Oh no, ma’am! Not disturbed childhoods!’
‘Possibly. That’s not my province.’ She was equable. ‘But why were those two sent here? You’ll be interviewing the parents, of course; you might get more information from the police in Brewer’s home town. His story was that Doyle was sent here by his father, that he’d been chasing girls, that he was the woman chaser here. Did he switch identities? Was it Brewer who had been in trouble—some kind of violence?’ She held his eye. ‘It could have been covered up. You might also find that their fathers kept them short of money.’
‘Their families are wealthy!’
‘Even if Brewer was telling me half truths I got the feeling that one father, and it would be his own, couldn’t deal with his son’s escapades. Apart from packing him off to a remote desert where it was hoped he could do no harm, a rich father who didn’t understand his son might think that cutting off the money supply would help to keep him out of trouble. I’m suggesting it because they robbed Donna Aragon. Am I doing your job for you?’
‘No, ma’am. I’m listening.’
‘Another suggestion then. Brewer and Doyle came and went much as they pleased: by truck, on horseback. They must have gone to Calcine for the evening on the same day that Janice was hitch-hiking to Molten, or Jack may have sent them there on an errand and it’s been forgotten because no one attached any importance to it. Whichever it was, they picked her up and raped her. I suppose that it’s possible she might have escaped with her life—Brewer was the kind of person who’d expect the police to be unsympathetic to a girl hitch-hiker claiming she’d been raped—but it’s also possible she betrayed the fact that she came from Molten. Rape victims are murdered usually because they can identify their assailant. At all events, they killed her and buried the body at Rattlesnake Pass and thought they were safe.’
‘That’s a reasonable assumption, but the motive for killing her is immaterial.’
‘Not to me,’ Miss Pink said firmly. ‘You’re impatient; you’re thinking about the next victim.’
‘Which he didn’t confess to.’ Miss Pink’s look was withering. Stuart attempted justification: ‘It’s hard to credit they’d kill a second time to cover up the first murder.’
‘You don’t believe that; you know it’s been done before, and the other way round: killing a number of people at random to cover the murder of the one you really want to kill. And Brewer was a psychopath. The second time was easier, much too easy—for him; his problem was Doyle. My guess is that things got harder for Doyle, not easier. It could have started when one of them saw coyotes in the vicinity of Janice’s grave. I assume something like that happened. Can it be seen from the dirt road that goes over Rattlesnake Pass?’
‘It’s half a mile from the road. You wouldn’t be able to see the grave for the creosote but certainly you’d see a coyote if you were looking, and every time they’d pass that place, they’d look. They’d see vultures too once the coyotes had scraped the dirt out.’
‘So something had to be done about the remains. Did Brewer look for a second victim, I wonder, or did they come on Donna’s car by accident: the night she’d decided to do a midnight flit with Bunny and left her car in view on the outskirts of Molten?’
‘Why did it have to be in view?’
‘Because if Brewer suddenly decided to murder Donna, her car had to be in view. One of two things happened: either they’d gone to Molten that night to murder Donna, saw her car and used the circumstances of her own planned disappearance to further their plan for her, or—and this doesn’t involve a coincidence—they met her in Calcine or on the road, and she told them, or one of them, what she and Bunny planned.’
Stuart was frowning. ‘But there’s never been any suggestion that those girls knew Brewer and Doyle.’
‘There wouldn’t be. Brewer may have received an ultimatum from his father, going back to my theory of his having been in trouble at home: he was told to behave himself or else. So he’d keep such a liaison quiet, not only because she was a prostitute but because she had ties with Molten. You know how the people there feel about Sweetwater, and so far as Jack is concerned, Molten shouldn’t really exist. To be forced to recognize its existence by way of a sordid liaison wouldn’t please him, apart from the fact that he might well tell Brewer’s father. As for the girls, they’d keep it quiet because, I suspect, Hammer relieved them of part of their earnings, not to speak of Vi and Muriel Webber.’
‘How did the boys find money for prostitutes?’
‘Did you never come across a prostitute with a lover? They were personable young men; they had charm. A lot of killers had charm. Think of George Joseph Smith.’ He gaped at her. ‘The Brides in the Bath. George Joseph appears to have been irresistible.’
‘It would be difficult to find proof of any liaison now that Bunny Kraus has disappeared into thin air.’ He looked at her meaningly but she was not intimidated: ‘You don’t need proof. It’s a pointer to motive, I’m merely—’
‘You’re filling me in, I know. I take it that Bunny Kraus did tell you.’
‘No. I misjudged that girl. I thought she was naïve and stupid but in fact she was loyal. She didn’t tell me that Donna stole the money, she didn’t tell me that Vi procured customers for them. And, evidently thinking that Brewer and Doyle were merely a couple of nice boys, she didn’t let on that Donna and she knew them.’
‘Why did Webber keep quiet?’
‘She didn’t know. If she had known, Vi and Hammer would have known, and they’d all have wanted a share in the money they’d expect the girls to be making from these rich boys. The girls wouldn’t have met them at the motel, of course, but out in the desert—and that explains why Brewer didn’t know which was Donna’s room. You remember, he took Bunny’s toothbrush and other toilet articles because he found Donna packing her clothes in Bunny’s room.’
‘Where was the killers’ car when they were killing Donna at the motel?’
‘Hidden behind a cabin. Where else? Where they’d almost certainly put hers too when they found it at the roadside. And having killed Donna and carried her body to her car, they’d go to Rattlesnake Pass for the remains of Janice’s body, drive to the Superstition Mountains and stage the accident. Either you’ll find the tracks of Donna’s car about Janice’s grave or traces of the remains in a Sweetwater truck. Finding all that money in Donna’s possession was a wild bonus to the crime. I imagine it would have amused Brewer. But the money was spin-off; the basic motive for Donna’s murder was to cover Janice’s. She had no car so they had to use someone else’s to start the fire, and that meant killing its driver.’
‘And then he killed his friend,’ Stuart said in disgust.
‘Men like Brewer don’t have friends, only people they use. Doyle was killed because he was weak. He may have started to crack when they realized that the second body in the car had been mistaken for Bunny. That meant Bunny had disappeared. Brewer would have been puzzled at that but not worried unduly. If she talked, what could she say? That Donna and she had met the two men in the desert at intervals? Brewer could have denied it: a hooker’s word against his. But Doyle was cracking, even in public. What one accepted at the time as nausea when gory details were elicited, was fear. In private to Brewer he would have been compounding the case against his continued existence. And if Doyle broke, his word would be believed; he was no hooker, and his story involved
murder, not just a liaison. Doyle was weak and dangerous. He had to go.’
‘Brewer didn’t confess to Doyle’s murder.’
‘Can Indians distinguish the tracks made by a particular horse?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If Brewer’s palomino went up to the Stone Cabin after Doyle rode up there and it ran home loose, could they tell?’
‘They could, but it was Doyle’s horse came home loose.’
‘No, it was the palomino.’
He stared at her, at a loss. ‘Tell me how he did it then.’
‘Let’s go back a bit. Brewer started to set Doyle up for murder on the morning that we went out to search for the mobsters. No—’ as he made to interrupt, ‘—they’re not important. They came down here after Donna certainly, but Brewer beat them to it. But you remember that at the time it was thought that the Mob had a hand in Donna’s death—and the girl it was thought was Bunny until she was identified as Janice—but not these particular villains because they wouldn’t have returned to Molten had they been the killers. However, Brewer was hedging his bets in case the murders couldn’t be brought home to the Mob, and he’d seen a way to get rid of Doyle and fasten suspicion on him and Emma as accessories.’
‘Why Emma?’
‘She was the only possible accessory for Doyle. He appeared quite struck on her. Brewer started working out his plan on me, hinting at Doyle having been in trouble back home, in love with Emma here. After that he worked quickly. Doyle was killed next day. He’d been sent into Bighorn Basin by Jack, Brewer had been sent in the opposite direction, down south. That’s probably where he went, certainly he didn’t go up to Bighorn Basin—’
‘He didn’t?’
‘Not in the daytime; he’d have been seen. It had to be done in the dark and I think he made sure that Doyle stayed at the Stone Cabin overnight, perhaps giving him a fake message from Jack that he was afraid poachers might be after the puma. Then Brewer went up as soon as it got dark, before the moon rose, leaving a light in the bunkhouse. He rode up to Bighorn Basin, having already stolen the gun from the Chadwicks’ rooms. Have you the ballistics report?’
‘Doyle was shot with Chadwick’s Walther.’
She nodded. ‘He had to be. Brewer reached the Stone Cabin, killed Doyle and rigged that murder to make it appear that there had been a rendezvous with a woman. Emma, of course. Why should a man be naked in bed in the daytime except for a woman?’
‘Daytime? I don’t follow.’
‘He was killed in the evening but it was rigged to look as if he’d died in the afternoon, at least before nightfall, because his horse was supposed to be tied to the hitching rail, saddled. No one goes to bed leaving his horse saddled unless—’ she paused, not wishing to offend his sense of delicacy.
‘I’m with you, ma’am. So what you’re saying is that Brewer got to the cabin in the evening before Doyle went to bed. But there’s no blood on Doyle’s clothes.’
‘He was sapped. Isn’t there a bruise?’
‘There is. We were puzzled.’
‘Sapped, stripped, put to bed and shot. Then Brewer caught Doyle’s horse, saddled it and rode it back.’
‘Why didn’t he ride his own horse?’
‘The palomino wasn’t saddled. It’s easier to ride hard with a saddle than bareback.’
‘How the hell—excuse me, ma’am.’
‘Well, he didn’t go to the Stone Cabin in a truck because of the noise; he had to ride and he had to do the outward journey bareback. Once he’d saddled Doyle’s horse he removed the bridle from the palomino and rode hard down the canyon. The loose horse would follow. He rode until he was approaching the corral but he couldn’t ride to it because the Indians might have heard him from their cabins. It’s doubtful, but had someone been outside they could have done. Moreover, by then it would be moonlight; he might have been seen. Again doubtful, but he wasn’t taking risks—not the ones he thought of. So some distance from the corral he turned Doyle’s horse loose and slipped through the creosote to the corral where he removed a pole so that the horses would get out. Then he replaced his own bridle in the stable and went to the bunk-house, trusting that no one had been there in his absence. No doubt he had an excuse ready. That would have been cutting it fine but he was full of self-confidence. Evidently no one had been there, and in the morning all the horses were out in the desert, among them Doyle’s saddled mount and the palomino. The reason why he rode the palomino without a saddle was that he didn’t want to be encumbered with that and a bridle when he had to approach the stable on foot, particularly if someone had been about and he’d had to dodge among the creosote. Besides, had anyone entered the stable they might have noticed the missing saddle where they might not be aware a bridle was missing.’
Stuart was doodling. Now he looked up. ‘The tracks of the horses should bear out all that, and if you’re right, the halter from Doyle’s horse will have been worked on with a knife. It looked frayed but we’ll send it to the laboratory. You know, another reason why he went up bareback would be that you can’t ride hard and lead a spare horse, so a loose saddled horse would have been coming down behind him, but not so fast as the ridden one. He’d have had to wait till it reached the corral and catch it to get the saddle off. Now that could have made quite a commotion. He was clever.’ There was a pause. ‘Clever of you to think of it, too,’ he added.
Miss Pink reached for her bag and checked. ‘You want a statement about yesterday?’
‘Shall we talk about it first? Why did you go after Emma Chadwick?’
She looked blank. ‘I was worried about her. Her state of mind. After all, her own husband thought she was implicated in the murders. That was why he confessed—pretended to.’
‘And he wouldn’t name his accessory. Of course I knew he was protecting her—and I had your message from Myron: that you were taking her somewhere safe. What was I to make of that? I tell you, ma’am, for a while I thought you were mixed up in it. You and her.’ He gave a snort of derision. ‘Why didn’t you tell Myron to tell me Brewer was the killer?’
‘I wasn’t sure. And Myron would have told Jack and there’s no knowing what Jack might have done. I was going to tell you when I telephoned: when I’d got Emma to a safe place.’
‘That doesn’t quite ring true, if you’ll forgive me saying so.’
‘The case was black against the girl: the planted money, the gun, her being close to Bighorn Basin the previous day. I thought there could be a trail from the canyon over the divide to the basin.’
‘There is. You missed it.’
Miss Pink was stunned. ‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘when someone is firing at you with a long-range rifle—Why didn’t Brewer take this trail?’
‘It goes off from the spring where you camped.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘And you didn’t know where the girl had been the previous day. You didn’t even know where she was that day until Myron told you. So why did you decide to go after her? Knowing she had a gun? You thought she was one of the killers, didn’t you? And that she was having an affair with Doyle.’
‘Rubbish. I followed her because she is very young and she thought her husband had turned against her—she had been cleverly framed. It’s quite simple: I was worried about her state of mind, but I talked her out of that and persuaded her to go on because I thought Brewer would kill her—if I was right about Brewer. And I was right.’
‘You’re keeping something back. Was she having an affair with Doyle? That doesn’t mean she had to know anything about the murders.’
She regarded him steadily. ‘If she and Doyle were having an affair, it’s over. As for being implicated in the murders, let’s be practical. She’d have an alibi for the night Donna was murdered.’
‘Her husband.’
‘You’re stretching it.’
‘Yes, I am. As you say, if she was having an affair, it has no relevance.’
‘I assume she’ll be charged with manslaughter.�
��
‘No, ma’am: justifiable homicide. How many shots did he take at you?’
She thought about it. ‘Perhaps we’ll have that statement now,’ he said, reaching for the tape recorder.
Chapter 18
‘I’m sending Simon and Emma to the Virgin Islands,’ Nielsen said. ‘They need a holiday, both of them. Melinda! Why did you do that?’
She had flicked a pebble in the direction of a snowy egret. It made a small plop in the water. The bird took a couple of steps up a mud spit and turned to stare at the ripples.
‘I like to see their feet,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Fascinating: like plastic yellow bootees. How soon will the kittens be born?’
He followed the thought process without difficulty. ‘Around the middle of February. A family of pumas is going to make inroads on my deer.’
‘You can’t have it all ways, Jack.’
‘Maybe they’ll take some of the wild burros; those can’t run as fast as deer.’ He sighed. ‘I’d have given anything to see that meeting. Do you realize how lucky you were?’
‘Jack!’
‘No, no!’ He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I don’t mean seeing them, but having them divert Brewer’s attention, of course.’ He looked prim.
Miss Pink was not deceived. ‘You’re incredible. A killer was stalking us, your manager’s wife shot him dead—and you find the most intriguing part was a couple of passing pumas.’
‘Look at the bright side. They were the good part.’
‘And the fact that Emma and I lived to tell about it. Three people died. Brewer makes it four.’
‘Yes, well, it’s like culling, isn’t it: the predator gets the stragglers of the herd? You and Emma had the power to keep ahead. Hardly prey animals at the end either.’ He chuckled. He was incorrigible.
