A Child's Garden of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  “She got it yesterday on her birthday,” Rocco said. “The camera, I mean.”

  “Figures,” Lyon replied.

  The camera panned to a beautiful, belligerent black face. “Hey, that’s Kimberly Ward,” Lyon said with delight. Kim lived in the apartment over the Wentworth garage with her teenage daughter. She was Bea’s administrative assistant, secretary and factotum for the Wentworths—when she wasn’t organizing protest marches. The camera moved from Kim’s face to the placard she was carrying. It paused there for a moment, and they could read the sign:

  “WELFARE LAWS ARE UNFAIR”

  “I get it,” Lyon said. “You’re arresting Kim for unlawful protest without a permit.”

  “No. Just watch.”

  Spasmodic camera shots showed the green filling with people, the speakers arriving, and part of the speech given by the congressman. At one point the camera tilted in a skewed angle, swerved away from the speaker’s platform and slid along the green, showing Amsten House and the Congregational Church. Rocco stopped the projector. He reversed the machine for a moment and then started it forward. The shots of the house and church slid past. Rocco again stopped the machine and isolated the church.

  “We were able to blow this frame up,” he said. “The astronomy department at the university isolated it and used a computer method developed for some of those space fly-bys. Look at the definition on the blowup.” He switched on the light and propped up a fifteen-by-fourteen picture of the church.

  “I can see him in there!” Lyon said. In the dark recess behind the belfry window, partway up the steeple, the definite image of a man holding a rifle could be discerned. “Too many shadows. You’ll never get an ID on that.”

  “I know, but I thought you might like to see it.”

  “Hey, no kidding, Rocco. I’m not being coy. I really don’t want to get involved.”

  “That’s not why I brought this stuff here. Keep watching.” He turned off the light and again started the projector. Bea was at the speaker’s podium making her introductory remarks for Randolph Llewyn. Even though Lyon knew what was coming, the muscles in his stomach tightened and he could feel the perspiration forming in the palms of his hands.

  As the introduction drew to a close, he could follow the movement of Bea’s lips. “The camera’s close in.”

  “First row,” Rocco mumbled.

  Lyon knew what Bea was saying: “A fine lawyer, dedicated family man, I give you the next governor of this state, Randolph Llewyn.”

  He saw his wife turn quickly and reach for Llewyn. Llewyn stood and was immediately flung backward by the impact of the bullet.

  The camera pointed to the sky, and then went dark. After the shots Debbie had probably flung herself to the ground as many others had.

  “I’m going to run the last few feet again,” Rocco said. “In slow motion.”

  Again Lyon watched the film and saw Bea finish her remarks, turn quickly from the podium and reach toward Llewyn. Llewyn died again and the film was finished.

  “Oh, my God,” Lyon said, and knew why Rocco had wanted him to see the film.

  “Yes,” Rocco replied.

  “Run it in slow motion again.”

  For the third time they watched Randolph Llewyn’s last filmed moments. Lyon felt his fingers cramp as he clutched the chair arms.

  Catapulting from the desk chair, he flung open the study door and staggered to the downstairs lavatory, where he vomited repeatedly into the toilet bowl. When the peristaltic motions subsided, he washed his face in very cold water, toweled himself and walked slowly back to the study.

  Rocco had poured another drink.

  “Do you think it’s conclusive?” Lyon asked.

  “I’m afraid so. I’ve had blowups made of the last few frames.”

  “I’d like to see them,” Lyon said as he moved his manuscript and typewriter from the desk.

  Rocco adjusted the lamp and spread the film blowups across the desk. He arranged them in frame sequence, starting at the top right-hand corner of the desk. They showed Bea’s last remark, her turn, Llewyn’s standing and then falling under the shot, and the second shot’s point of impact.

  “What’s the elapsed time from this frame to this frame?” Lyon asked, pointing.

  “Half a second.”

  “Exact distance from the steeple window to the platform?”

  “Two hundred and nineteen yards.”

  “Scope on the rifle?”

  “Yes, with windage adjusted. He knew what he was doing.”

  “Trigger squeeze would take—?”

  “Part of a second.”

  Both men looked again at the movie blowups. The first shot hit Llewyn, and as he fell, Bea bent toward him. The second shot, as the pictures clearly indicated, entered a sign immediately to the rear of where Bea had been standing.

  “It would have hit her neck or lower face,” Lyon said in a low voice.

  “I know,” Rocco said and put a hand on Lyon’s shoulder. “He was using a soft-nosed bullet, hollow point; it flattens on impact. One for each of them.”

  “He could have been a nut who didn’t care.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No, too much care and preparation.” Lyon reached into the bottom desk drawer and took out a rolled geodetic map and a pair of dividers. “All right, let’s see where the bastard was going.” He unrolled the map and weighted the edges with books. He bent over the map and began to draw intersecting lines leading away from the Congregational Church and cemetery.

  Both men turned with a start as the study door banged open. Bea stood in the hallway, the bright light behind her outlining her figure through the nearly transparent nightgown.

  “OH, MY GOD!” she said. “HE’S DRAWING CIRCLES ON MAPS AGAIN!”

  2

  “ALL RIGHT, YOU GUYS, WRAP IT UP!” Bea yelled.

  “I was going to suggest the same to you, dear,” Lyon said as he pointedly looked at her clearly outlined figure while Rocco diplomatically averted his eyes.

  “Oh.” Bea scuttled from the room. They heard her rummaging through the downstairs hall closet.

  “I don’t want her to know,” Lyon whispered.

  “Then get Bea the hell away from here for a while. Send her on a cruise, to Europe.”

  “She’d never go. The legislature’s in special session, and the nominating convention’s in a few days.”

  Bea came back wearing Lyon’s rumpled London Fog raincoat over her nightgown. She plunked down defiantly in a chair and glared at them. “Come on, you guys. No circles on maps, no lists of suspects. YOU PROMISED ME, LYON.”

  “Do you want me to get your hearing aid, dear?”

  “I’m not staying long enough for it; and besides, you can hear me and I don’t need to hear you.”

  “It’s settled, Beatrice,” Lyon said in a low voice. “I will give Rocco any help I can in this matter.”

  “WHAT?”

  “We’re working on it together. It’s settled.”

  “You’re stubborn as hell, Wentworth. Don’t you remember the last time you two worked on a case together? You were almost killed and ended up in a hospital. I can sum this all up in one word. ONE WORD.”

  “That’s all right, dear. I can imagine.”

  “And as far as you’re concerned, Chief Herbert, I’m calling your wife and telling her that the two of you are screwing nubile girls in Lyon’s study.”

  She flounced from the room and slammed the door. With a worried look Rocco sank back in the chair. “Do you really think she’ll call my wife?”

  Lyon shook his head. “No, but she will fume for a day or two.”

  “You know, you’re going to have to tell her some story. I’ve got men guarding the house.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “Okay.” The chief seemed to dismiss that portion of their discussion and leaned forward. “Here’s all we have. One rifle firmly established as the murder weapon, and of course we’re running
a check on it, but I wouldn’t count on anything from that source.”

  “And the tire marks, you say, are ordinary?”

  “Yes. Unless we have the original motorcycle to compare them with, there’s no way to trace it.”

  “Any evidence in the church?”

  “Nothing. No prints, and no one saw him.”

  “You’re sure it’s a him?”

  “Hell, we can’t even establish that. You and I were the only ones who saw the killer, and I can’t even establish sex. You know what my question is?”

  “Why Beatrice? I don’t know. I really don’t. Certainly nothing in our personal life. Of course she has a great many political enemies, and there are large segments of the opposition that would be pleased as hell to have her shut up, but killing her … I can’t believe that.”

  “I don’t buy any maniacal nut theory.”

  “Me either. Rifle with scope, right angle of fire, planned escape route—hardly anything haphazard about it.”

  “It’s got to be politically motivated. There’s no other answer,” Rocco said.

  Scenes of angry people flashed before Lyon’s eyes. Committee meetings, political meetings, forums—filled over the years with anger directed toward his wife. She took strong positions and had either staunch supporters or spiteful enemies. No individual stood out with clarity, no pictures of a potential killer. “I just don’t know,” he finally said.

  “You could help by drawing up a list.”

  “I’ll try. If we’d been getting threatening letters or phone calls … nothing like that has happened.”

  Rocco stood. “Why don’t you think on it? Maybe one of us will come up with something.” Lyon, staring out the window into the darkness, didn’t answer. “Take this.” Rocco pulled a .32 automatic from his jacket pocket and handed it butt first to Lyon. “Come down to my office in the morning and we’ll fix you up with a permit.”

  Lyon took the gun gingerly. “I don’t want it.”

  “I’d rather you did. You know how to use it.”

  “Of course, but still—”

  “Keep it. See you in the morning.”

  The police chief lumbered from the room, and Lyon heard him quietly close the outside door. He sat looking at the weapon in his hand.

  The phone’s ring cut through his groggy sleep. He stretched uncomfortably in the leather chair and massaged a crick in his neck. He wondered what the phone company would do if he blew up the local transmission lines. He reached for the receiver.

  “Thornburton here. Do you know what else Robin wants to do?”

  “I haven’t seen her in a couple of years, Stacey. The last time she was here, I think she wanted to be an astronaut.”

  “Be a sculptor! She wants to build big damn statues like the Russkies do. You know the kind, men beating plowshares into rifles, that sort of thing.”

  “I’m not quite sure it goes that way.”

  “Next, she’ll turn pinko.”

  “You’re a fine artist, Stacey. One of the best illustrators in the business. She’s trying to follow in your—”

  “Don’t say it, Wentworth. Get yourself another boy. I’m sending the outline back. My next project is going to be a portfolio of posthumous Medal of Honor winners in action.”

  “Stacey, you never got within twenty miles of the front.”

  “That’s below the belt, Wentworth. Really, below the belt.”

  The phone clicked dead. He turned to see Bea examining the photographs spread across the desk. “Bea.”

  “If you’d finish the book and send him a final copy to work on, we’d all be better off,” she said without turning from her inspection of the pictures Rocco had left.

  “Bea.”

  “I was lonely upstairs alone,” she said in a soft voice, without turning. “I came down to get you.”

  “I must have fallen asleep.”

  She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide, her face chalky as she went to him and took the .32 from his fingers. “Falling asleep with a gun is dangerous. You could shoot your toe off or some other dumb thing.”

  Lyon took the gun back and slammed it into the center desk drawer. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  “Yes,” she replied distantly. “I looked at the pictures. Taken from a movie film, huh?”

  “Oh, those, yes. Debbie what’s-her-name had a camera, and you know how Rocco is, he wanted me to see them.”

  “It was meant for me too, wasn’t it?”

  “No. He just thought I might see something in them that—”

  “The bullet. The bullet that missed me. I can look at these things and see that.”

  “A haphazard thing,” he mumbled.

  “Llewyn was killed and I was supposed to be too.”

  “Bea, please.”

  “Oh, my God, Lyon. I’m scared.”

  “There are two policemen outside the house right now.”

  “What about tomorrow, the day after?”

  “We’ll find him, her, whoever it is. I promise you, Bea. We’ll find him.”

  “I demand my rights.”

  Lyon Wentworth sat bolt upright in bed and tried to reach for a weapon before his eyes focused and he saw Kimberly Ward’s angry black face bent over the bed.

  “Damn it all, Kim. We have rights too. We’re in bed.”

  Bea untwined herself from Lyon and sat up groggily.

  “I demand a lawyer,” Kim said. “I will not tolerate any more of this surveillance.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “Damn it, Kim, do you have to protest in our bedroom at”—Bea looked at the small electric clock on the night table—“at seven in the morning?”

  “Damn right!” Kim yelled. “The fuzz is staked out in the yard. Two pigs. One in the back and one in the front. They even changed shifts a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s not surveillance on you, Kim,” Lyon said.

  “That big buddy of yours is behind this. Old Super Pig is after my butt.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “They said they’d get me after my equalization of unemployment benefits protest.”

  “Why don’t we have breakfast and talk about it?” Lyon suggested as he heaved himself out of bed, then retreated rapidly when he realized he was stark naked.

  “Oh,” Kim said quietly into her coffee after Lyon and Bea outlined the situation for her. “I guess we had all better do something.”

  “It might be a good idea if you took a long visit with your aunt in Hartford,” Bea suggested.

  “No way,” Kim retorted. Her eyes glinted angrily. “I think we had better get shotguns. That’s what they used on the Attica brothers.”

  “How about a machine gun on the parapet?” Lyon suggested.

  “That’s silly,” Bea retorted. “I was thinking of V-2s in the vestibule.”

  “You’re both nuts,” Kim said.

  “WE’RE OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS, KIMBERLY,” Bea shouted, and then adjusted her hearing aid.

  “Take to ground,” Kim said, “I know a couple of safe houses that we’ve used where no one will ever find you.”

  “I’m afraid to ask whom you’ve hidden,” Lyon mumbled.

  “I am not going to sneak away,” Bea said. “I will not cower under the table or take off to Europe. Life will go on as it always has.”

  “You’re not going to the special session of the legislature?” Kim asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Rocco suggested last night that we might make up a list of possible political enemies for him to work on.”

  “Past, present or future?” Bea asked. “That would take a city directory, but it would be bipartisan.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Lyon said.

  Bea finished her coffee and stood up. “All right, everyone, we have lots to do today.”

  “Sandbag the windows?” Kim asked.

  “No, my dear,” Bea replied. “You and I have a lot of work to do on a gun-legislati
on bill that I’m going to attach as a rider to their silly sales-tax increase. Lyon has to lock himself in the study and make us all a living.”

  “I thought I’d take a flight this morning,” Lyon said.

  “Oh, no.” Bea sank back in her chair. “Not that.”

  “Want to come? It’s very relaxing and a wonderful time to sort things out.”

  “The last flight you took ended up in the Connecticut River.”

  “That wasn’t all my fault. Will you two help me get off the ground?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “No.”

  They trundled the hot-air balloon from the barn at the rear of the house and spread the balloon evenly along the ground. As Bea held the bottom aperture open, Lyon braced the propane burner against his hip and shot jagged spurts of flame into the bag. As the air began to heat, the large bag filled and slowly rose. They scurried around the perimeter, unfolding the creases so that it filled quickly and evenly.

  As the balloon envelope took shape and began to lift lazily from the ground, the huge dimensions of Lyon’s major book characters began to form. Painted by Stacey Thornburton during his last visit to Connecticut at the cost of three bottles of Jack Daniel’s, the two immense Wobblies curved around the balloon to join hands (or paws) over the legend, WOBBLY II.

  With the bag firmly held to the ground by mooring lines, the small wicker basket danced a few feet off the surface. Lyon walked slowly around the filling balloon and checked the bag for wear and leaks and occasionally tugged on ropes to make sure that all was secure. As he climbed into the gondola, he adjusted the flow of propane on the burner immediately below the bag’s appendix. He made other preflight checks and waved to the waiting women who held the mooring lines.

  The lines were released, and as he reeled them into the basket, the balloon began its slow ascent.

  At 650 feet he again adjusted the propane burner, released a smidgin of hot air from the bag, and leveled his altitude. In the yard below, the women waved and slowly began to walk back to the house. It seemed obvious from their body language that they were animatedly arguing—and then it occurred to him that gun legislation wouldn’t be Kim’s cup of tea, to say the least.

  The bag drifted slowly in the almost windless day, and Lyon leaned over the edge of the basket to watch the moving panorama below. Their house, Nutmeg Hill, sat solidly on its granite base on the promontory overlooking the river, its four chimneys pointing stalwartly toward the sky and bracketing the widow’s walk. Not that the house was that large; in fact it had been a rather rambling, falling-down house when they purchased and began to renovate it.