Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  I made it to the end of the drive without being stopped. Scores of fire hoses had transformed the lawn into a plate of spaghetti. The flower beds had been trampled into mush, garnished here and there with sprigs of fading color. The manicured grounds were a quagmire. I was sad even before I looked at the house.

  It was completely in flames. They flickered through the black smoke like lights on a switchboard, darting in and out, up and down, materializing in one place, then another, fanned by the valley winds into a white-hot kaleidoscope. The smoke rose in roily clouds, erasing the sun. The once pristine walls were crusted like slices of burnt toast.

  The heat was so intense I had to shield my eyes with my hand. For an instant I thought I was back in Korea, where smoke and flames and heat and the death that came with them had been a way of life for unimaginable months.

  Firemen moved around me, speaking in tense, hushed voices, looking like hooded priests of the occult, intent on blood ritual. Someone bumped into me and told me to get the hell out of the way.

  I moved to the edge of the firefighting activity and watched the work. Streams of water showered the house from all directions, but instead of starving the flames, the water seemed to feed and then enrage them. The building popped and hissed like a living thing, then seemed to move, to shift position as if to ease its searing agony. I thought I could see one of the tapestries through the door, burning as it hung on the wall. A private glimpse of hell.

  I looked for Whitson and the girl but couldn’t see them. Then, off to the side, back toward the rear of the house, I noticed a small group of people huddled together watching the fire, so I drifted back that way.

  There were several young men standing there, all Chicano, dressed in Levis and light blue work shirts and speaking softly among themselves in Spanish. The young men seemed to defer to an older man whom one of them called Luis. I stood on the fringe of the group until one of the young ones noticed me. He nudged Luis and they both looked my way. I asked if anyone had been hurt in the fire.

  The young man said something to Luis in Spanish and Luis nodded. I understand some Spanish but I can’t converse in it with anyone over the age of ten so I didn’t know what they said.

  “Who are you, señor?” Luis asked me in a voice as rich as a Casals concerto. Orange flames danced in his dark eyes like sparks from a grinder’s wheel.

  “My name is Tanner,” I said. “I’m from San Francisco. Mr. Whitson wanted me to do some work for him. Is he around?”

  No one spoke for a moment. Luis looked at the fire and then at me and then back to the fire. “He is in there,” he said quietly as he watched the burning house. “That is his grave.”

  As if to confirm that statement the flames exploded even higher. A ceiling timber gave way with a crash. Sparks and cinders showered us. I brushed a glowing ember off my sleeve. The young Mexicans seemed not to notice the fiery rain.

  “He didn’t get out?” I asked.

  “He got out. Then he went back in.”

  “Why?”

  “To get a paper. An important paper.”

  “And he and the paper are still in there.”

  “The paper is safe. When Señor Whitson went back in the front door he did not know that Marisa had already taken the paper before she left out the back. There was no need for him to return to the house, but he did not know. Marisa feels badly but it is not her fault. When I got here from the bunkhouse I went in after him, but the flames were too high. There was no way to go. It was like the hell of our ancestors.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “He seemed like a fine gentleman.”

  Luis nodded. “That he would try to save a paper, that the patrón would sacrifice his life to save some words, is a remarkable thing, is it not?”

  “It is.”

  “Señor Whitson often worried that he was not a man, I think. Now he will sleep in peace.”

  We all watched the blaze for a while longer, the pyre of John Whitson. Whatever happened, he would never see his son. If my guess was right, it was probably just as well.

  The oldest boy blurted something in Spanish and Luis held up a hand to silence him. “Marisa,” he yelled and looked behind him. From the other side of the garage came the girl, seemingly untouched by the holocaust except for a black smudge at the hem of her white dressing gown. She was even more lovely in the firelight, if that was possible.

  Luis asked her a question and she looked at me and nodded. “Marisa confirms that you have talked with Señor Whitson,” Luis said to me. “My son thought perhaps you were not who you claimed to be. You have my apologies.” Luis bowed slightly and the boy scowled and shuffled around in the mud.

  “I wasn’t actually working for Mr. Whitson,” I said, “but I was working on a case he was interested in. I’m a detective. Whitson believed that what I found out would be of help to him, but I was not his employee and he was not my client.”

  Luis smiled briefly. “That is as Marisa has said.”

  “How did the fire start?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” Luis answered. “Marisa believes there was an explosion. I did not hear it, but I do not live in the big house. It was an old building. Many things are possible.”

  “It seems to have spread pretty fast.”

  “Very fast.”

  “Particularly for an adobe building.”

  “Perhaps. But there was much wood inside. What are you thinking, señor?”

  “That someone set it,” I said simply.

  Luis looked at me coldly. So did the other men. I hadn’t meant it to be an accusation, but they took it that way. “That is a strange thing to say,” Luis said stiffly.

  “Strange things have been happening lately,” I said. “That’s why Whitson wanted to hire me.”

  “Perhaps you would tell me what kind of work you are doing to help the patrón.”

  “I’m going to find his son.”

  An eyebrow lifted, nothing more. “His son? His son is dead, señor.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he may be on this ranch. Right now.”

  “Impossible, señor. You speak of ghosts.”

  “Were you living on the ranch when Michael was here?”

  “I have been on this ranch my whole lifetime. As were my father and his father before him. I knew Michael well. I taught him many things. Things of the land. He taught me many things as well. Things of the mind. He was a good boy. Worthy of his heritage.”

  “Suppose Michael didn’t die, Luis. And suppose he needed a place to hide for a while. Is there somewhere on the ranch he might go?”

  “The ranch has twenty thousand acres. Michael knew every inch. By jeep, on horseback, on foot, he traveled it all. With me. There are many places to hide, for animals and for men. It would take many weeks to find him if he does not wish to be found.”

  “Suppose he has a young girl with him. A crippled girl who can’t walk. He would need a place he could drive to, and one that was fairly comfortable. A cave, maybe, or an old cabin.”

  Luis didn’t answer. I looked where he was looking and saw a fireman being carried away from the burning house and put on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. The driver flicked his siren to life. The scream was human.

  I pulled out the snapshot I’d found at Mrs. Peel’s and handed it to Luis and watched him examine it.

  “Señorita Peel,” he said, his voice flattening with disgust.

  “Yes.”

  “She was a bad one. A puta. But Michael was like all young men. He was willing to sacrifice anything, even his dignity, for a woman such as this. I shared his father’s pain. Later my son did the same, with a different woman, but he eventually learned that no pleasure of the flesh is worth such a sacrifice. Michael was not so lucky. He died before he could acquire such wisdom.”

  “Look at the background in the picture. The trees. The lake, or whatever it is. I thought maybe it was taken on this ranch.”

  Luis looked at the snapshot for a moment, then showed it to h
is son. They murmured to each other in Spanish, then Luis handed the picture back to me. “You say Michael may be hiding,” he said softly. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s afraid the police may be after him.”

  “Because of the death of the old man?”

  “Yes.” Among other things, but I didn’t say what.

  “Why do you wish to find him now? The patrón is dead.”

  “Michael has his daughter with him,” I said. “I want to be sure she hasn’t been harmed.”

  “If Michael is her father you need not worry.”

  “Perhaps, but I’d like to make sure. She has been adopted by another couple and they are worried about her. And I want to talk Michael into giving himself up. I’ve talked to the sheriff and he doubts that a case can be made against him for killing Jed Peel, not after all these years.”

  I didn’t say anything to Luis about Harry Spring or about Mrs. Peel. His loyalty to Whitson would be stronger than his concern over the death of two strangers. I had to convince Luis I was going to be helping Michael. And maybe I was.

  Luis and his son talked again, then Luis turned back to me. “We do not know where this place is,” he said. “We do not know where Michael might be. Now please excuse us. We must make sure none of the other buildings catch fire.” He started to walk away.

  “Wait a minute,” I said quickly. “You think you’re protecting Michael, but you’re not. The police will find him. He’s come out of hiding and he’s kidnapped a young girl. Her father, the man who adopted her, is an important man in this state, even more important than Mr. Whitson. The police will keep after Michael until they find him, and if the police are the first ones there, someone might get hurt. Do you know Sergeant Cates?”

  The young Chicano spit into the mud. “Cates is a pig,” he muttered.

  “Like many young people of today,” Luis said, “my son is preoccupied with past injustices to his people. He calls many persons pigs. Often he is wrong. This time he is not.”

  “I agree,” I said. “And I want to be sure Cates isn’t the one who finds Michael Whitson. I want to convince Michael to turn himself in to Sheriff Marks.”

  “I have no quarrel with the sheriff,” Luis said. “He has always treated my people fairly.”

  “Then let me get to Michael. Let me talk to him. If we wait any longer it may be too late.”

  “Why should we believe what you say?” Luis’s son blurted.

  I didn’t look at the boy. I looked at Luis. “Your patrón wanted me to find his son,” I said. “It was important to him. You know better than I how important it was. You can help me. I believe Mr. Whitson would want you to. I believe you owe it to his memory to help me.”

  It might have been too thick. Luis was silent. The fire continued, sucking the air away before my lungs could seize it. My head hurt and my face burned like an open wound. Finally Luis nodded. “The place in the picture is known to us. There is a small lake. And a cabin. Michael used to go there often. I will show you.”

  “I’d rather go alone.”

  Luis looked at me again, then at the fire. He looked at it for a long time. “Very well,” he said.

  THIRTY

  The road had begun back at the Whitson ranch. It led east across fields as flat and green as craps tables, past machines looking more appropriate for war than farming, among irrigation ditches and storage bins and migrant shanties. I had been driving for almost an hour; now I was well into the foothills, the pedestal of the High Sierras.

  The car climbed slowly and irregularly, winding between scrub oaks and granite boulders, nosing its way along a fading trail. It was a place seldom trod upon, seldom annoyed. I felt alone and alien, a trespasser in a land where man was evil, his presence unnecessary and despised.

  A ground squirrel darted out of my path, then stopped to scold me for disturbing him. High in the sky, beneath a cloud gray with dusk, two hawks soared in lazy circles, awaiting prey. It was a serene and lovely landscape. The only sounds came from things I had brought with me.

  As I rattled around inside the car, the Spring case rattled around inside my head. I was starting to worry about my theory that Michael Whitson had killed Harry Spring and Elena Peel and that he had taken Claire Nelson and retreated to a childhood haven. I didn’t have any proof and I was skipping some steps, following a hunch instead of a lead, hoping I would catch up to Whitson in a little cabin at the end of a bumpy road. If I was right, I could end it all up here in the hills. But if I was wrong, if Michael Whitson was dead or blameless or blithely uninvolved, there would be nothing at the cabin but wasted time and Claire Nelson would be in more danger than I wanted to think about. Then there would be nothing to do but go back to Oxtail and find Rodman’s sister and go on from there, on to her brother Al and from him most probably to a place I didn’t want to go—the murky pond where Duckie Bollo and his playmates swam beyond the law.

  As much as I wanted to believe my theory, there was one big obstacle. I was certain the fire at the Whitson mansion wasn’t accidental, and I couldn’t understand why Michael Whitson would burn out his father. His mother was long dead and his father was a recluse who had abandoned civilized existence in memory of his son. He wasn’t remotely a threat to Michael, so why torch the house?

  Insanity was a possible answer. Michael had been living behind a Kabuki mask for twenty years, a life that would generate enough stress to warp any brain. But while insanity is always the first explanation offered for a motiveless crime, it almost never is the answer. Murder usually makes sense, at least from the murderer’s point of view.

  Money was another possibility, but that didn’t make sense either. John Whitson would have gladly conferred the wealth of Croesus upon his son the moment the boy stepped forward, which made killing the old man a waste of time and energy. And none of my candidates for the role of the long-lost son seemed interested in money, with the possible exception of Andy Potter.

  Speculation performed an adagio for a few minutes, then it was time to look for the turnoff Luis had told me about. I had driven twenty miles. The road was barely visible, two slight indentations in the rocky hardpan. The oaks had become pines and the black earth had become brown dust. I couldn’t tell if anyone had been this way in the past day or in the past year.

  Then I saw the marker, a long-dead pine, branchless, scorched by lightning on one side, whitened by the sun and wind on the other, standing as alone as a prophet at the top of the next ridge. Just this side of the tree faint tracks led off to the north, winding over and down behind the ridge.

  I checked my gun to make sure it was loaded, then made sure I had enough gas to get back down out of the hills. Then I thought about Harry Spring. I hadn’t thought about Harry in quite a while. A lot had been happening, a series of dramas that bent and shaped my concentration this way and that, like potter’s clay. But Harry was the reason I was out here chasing ghosts, and I wanted to make sure I remembered it.

  Chuckholes and rocks and tree limbs tossed me like a bareback rider as I turned and followed the trail. The Buick hit bottom several times, testing its design limits. I crossed a steep saddle, dipped into a narrow gorge, followed a dry creek bed for twenty yards, circled a small hillock and I was there.

  The lake glimmered in the twilight, a platinum coin lying in a black purse of pines. It was beautiful, but it was a dark, haunted beauty, the kind that can turn ugly and terrifying without warning. I drove down to the edge of the forest, turned the car around to face the way I had come, and stopped.

  The cabin was barely visible through the trees on the other side of the lake. I couldn’t tell if anyone was there. I got out of the car and started circling toward the cabin. As I walked into the trees the ground rose slightly, and I followed a course that would take me to the top of a small hill at the rear of the cabin.

  The air was still except for the muted crunch of shoe leather on pine needles and, once in a while, the sound of something scurrying out of my way. I couldn’t
see much, just the tree trunks that briefly caged me and the prickly canopy that eclipsed the stars. A set of wings flapped somewhere overhead and startled me. I almost fell. I put my hand on a tree to steady myself and felt something sticky. I rubbed my hand on my pants but the sticky stuff wouldn’t come off.

  After a ten-minute hike I reached a slight rise about thirty yards in back of the cabin. I sat down and looked the place over. It was built of limestone and cedar and had a tar roof that slanted toward the rear. There was a small deck in the back, with some firewood stacked beneath it. An old camp chair on the deck had been tipped on its side. The door from the cabin to the deck looked as if it might be open, but I couldn’t be sure.

  The place was dark and quiet, but someone was there. A new Plymouth with the black tires and chromeless flanks of a rental unit was parked half-hidden by the trees.

  I leaned against a stump and watched and listened as well as a city boy can. Nothing human happened. A bird called out to another bird and the other bird answered. After a while I moved around so I could see the other side of the cabin. Nothing. I sat down again. The cool night air began to seep inside my summer clothing, turning my flesh tight and stiff, like canvas.

  I was going to have to go down there, and it didn’t make much difference when or how I did it. I would either surprise him or I wouldn’t. Maybe I should have waited for a few hours, to try to catch Whitson while he was asleep, but I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t like sitting there in the woods. Not at night. Not cold. Not alone.

  I looked around to make sure I had my bearings. I looked at the lake and at the little dock in front of the cabin and at the pines, and at the cabin and at the little dock again. In my mind I envisioned a small boy sitting on the end of that dock, fishing with a cane pole and a plastic bobber, and I remembered where I had seen that same scene before and then I knew who I was going to find inside that cabin, knew who Michael Whitson had been for twenty years, knew who had killed Harry Spring to keep Harry from finding out who he was.