Killed on the Rocks

by William L. DeAndrea

  “I know, Rox, I’m trying to—”

  “Cobb, you have to do something!”

  “Good idea,” I said. It’s a lot easier to humor someone in that kind of mood. “I’ll get right on it. Come on, Spot.”

  Mrs. Norman was standing just inside the main door. She screamed again when she saw me. I was insulted until I realized I was still running around clad only in a pair of old red gym shorts. I hadn’t brushed my teeth and combed my hair, either.

  I told her it was all right, I was no danger to her or anybody, but she wasn’t having any. I ignored her for a moment, and did what I’d come down there to do. I told Spot to watch the door. No one would be leaving now, unless he or she considered getting out of the house to be worth a lot of dog bites.

  By the time I’d gotten that taken care of, Mrs. Norman had a new tune.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help!”

  Just what I needed. I supposed I really couldn’t blame her. Her brain had been in the middle of forming the concept “homicidal maniac” when here came a disheveled, mostly naked man running alongside a dog with very sharp teeth.

  I knew instinctively that anything I might say or do would just make things worse. I certainly wasn’t going to touch her. The last thing I needed was for her to start yelling rape.

  I was just about to run away as fast as I’d come—there were things that still had to be done in a hurry—when help arrived.

  The screaming woman’s husband was briefly in the lead, but he was passed just at the bottom of the stairs by Ralph, our driver. Ralph’s appearance startled me for a second, but it shouldn’t have. He drove us up here. The car was still here. If we were snowed in, so was he.

  If being improperly clad was Mrs. Norman’s chief criterion for suspicion, the sight of her rescuers should not have brought her much comfort. Her husband wore pajama bottoms with little beach balls on them and a sleeveless undershirt. Ralph was as bare-chested and barefooted as I was. He was, however, wearing long pants, the slacks from his chauffeur’s uniform. He also had the hairiest chest I had ever seen. I half expected to see WELCOME written out across it.

  I started talking before they stopped running. We finished in a dead heat.

  “... and there are no footprints,” I concluded. “So no one should go out there until we’ve found out all we can.”

  Norman was puffing, but game. His wife, at least, had stopped screaming. “What if the poor guy’s still alive?”

  “Did you look at him?” I asked.

  “I did,” Ralph said. “From a room across from where they put me. Froze my arms getting the snow off the window.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead. If he was alive, he’d still be bleeding.”

  I turned to Norman, expecting further argument, but to my surprise he took Ralph’s words for gospel. That was nice.

  “Jack Bromhead’s off looking for a camera,” I said. “And telling Dost what’s happened. But I want to get another look right away. Help the dog watch the door, all right?”

  “What makes you think you’re in charge?” Norman demanded, and if I’d had to answer him, I would have been stuck. Again, Ralph came to my rescue. He put out a hand, and said, “Shh, it’s all right,” and again the butler/ jack-of-all-trades subsided.

  I headed back up the stairs, figuring an extra bit of elevation might show me more. Specifically, I wanted to see if there was a route to where the body was that would get you there without leaving tracks in the snow.

  I passed some angry and/or bewildered people coming down the stairs as I went up. Haskell Freed wanted to know what the meaning of it all was. I would have been delighted to tell him, but since I didn’t have the first idea, I skipped it. I saw a stocky blond guy I didn’t recognize, and stopped for a minute to ask him who the hell he was. Turned out his name was Cal Gowe, and he was the other driver, the one who’d taken Freed and Bats Blefary here.

  I was pretty well out of gas when I got to the fourth floor. I had been toying with the idea of going all the way up to the top floor to look, but my lungs convinced me to do that only if I couldn’t learn anything from here.

  I heard sobbing as I reached the top of the stairs, a man’s sobbing, hopeless and unashamed. It was coming from the hallway to my right, the way opposite the one that led to where Ralph had told me his room was.

  I walked softly down the hallway—it was easy, I was barefoot—until I came to the room at the end of the hall. On the right, facing the front of the house. It had to be the room the cables came into.

  The door was open. I stood in the doorway and looked at the electronic equipment that sent the proper TV and voice and telex and fax information to the proper parts of the house, and the panel below the windowsill that held the ends of the wires. There was an icy breeze from the open window.

  Barry Dost was leaning over the sill, crying. He was fully dressed, from shiny black oxfords to a dark tweed jacket. Every once in a while, he tried to say “Dad,” but it was washed away in a sea of blubbering.

  Obviously, Barry Dost knew, or thought he knew, something I didn’t. I had had a sinking suspicion that it was Dost out there in the snow ever since I first looked out the window, but I didn’t know. I wanted to find out why Barry was so sure.

  This was going to be tricky. I mean, judging from his little explosion last night, I didn’t have to worry about presuming on a friendship. On the other hand, he might hate me too much to tell me anything.

  He still didn’t even know I was there.

  “Barry?” I said softly.

  He turned from the window. With his eyes red and puffy and his nose running like a syrup dispenser, he was no treat to look at.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “I’d like to know why you think—”

  “And why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

  I made myself a silent promise that the next time I came across an impossibly dead corpse, I would don a goddam tuxedo before I did anything else.

  “Too busy to get dressed,” I told him.

  He sniffed and sneered at the same time, a good trick. “Too busy doing what?”

  “Why are you so convinced it’s your father out there?” I asked.

  “I heard him. I heard him last night. I was in my room down the hall. I heard him walking by. I know his step, and I know his voice. He was talking.”

  “What was he saying?”

  “Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one he was talking to.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Liar!” he screamed. “You’re a damned liar! He called you by name!” His mouth kept moving, but no sound came out. He was approaching complete hysteria. I wondered what the hell I could do for him.

  I was still wondering that when he jumped me.

  I was too startled to move. He got his hands on my neck and bore me to the floor. What he lacked in technique, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. He kept cheering himself on (or me off) with little cries of “You did it, you bastard, you did it, you did it.”

  It was time to do something. Like make it possible for me to breathe, for instance. The position we were in, with both my arms free, made it possible for me to do any number of things to make him stop, and fast, but they all involved permanent damage to Barry Dost. I wasn’t ready for that. Yet.

  Instead, I forced my forearms up inside his, and pried his hands off me. He felt it happening, and didn’t like the idea, but I was too strong for him. He screamed wordlessly as his hands came apart, and I rolled out from under him.

  Then he surprised me. He didn’t try to jump back on or anything, he just got to his feet, and kicked me hard in the side of the head while I was still rolling.

  I tried to get up. I made it as far as my hands and knees, but I had to stop to shake some stars from in front of my eyes. I put my hand to the side of my head, then took it away and looked at it.

  No blood, I thought. Hooray.

  I made it to my feet, and staggered up against
some electronic control panel. The metal was cold and shocked me alert.

  He could have killed me, I thought. The goddam overgrown twerp could have killed me. The temple is the thinnest part of the skull. I thanked God, not for the first time, for having given me a thick one.

  It occurred to me to peek out of the doorway and see where he was. I looked just in time to see him down at the other end of the corridor, disappearing around the corner to an as yet unknown (by me) part of Rocky Point.

  To hell with him for now. Where was he going to go?

  But I still wanted a few words with that boy. I could still feel his cold, dry hands on my throat, the cold, dry rough cloth of his jacket against my chest. The toe of his oxford against my skull.

  That could all wait. I had to go talk to some people about a corpse.

  8

  But wait, there’s more!

  —numerous late-night TV commercials

  I STOPPED AT MY room on the way downstairs and got dressed. I dressed warmly, because I knew that sooner or later I was going out in that snow. I also tried to phone the cops, but I couldn’t raise a dial tone.

  Spot was still guarding the door when I got downstairs, but no one in the crowd that had gathered down there was bothering him. They were all looking expectantly at me, as though they were waiting for me to tell them everything was okay, and they could go back to bed.

  The gang was all here, too. Wilberforce, Carol Coretti, Haskell Freed, Roxanne Schick, and Bats Blefary from the Network; Jack Bromhead and Aranda Dost from G. B. Dost Enterprises; Mr. and Mrs. Norman; and Cal Gowe, and Ralph. The only ones missing were the Dosts, father and son.

  “Where’s Gabby?” I asked Bromhead.

  “Couldn’t find him,” he said. “Or Barry either. You have any luck?”

  “I found Barry. He seems to think it’s his father out there in the snow.”

  Aranda Dost fainted. If it was a fake, it was a good one. Both knees bent to the left and down she went, hard, on the stone floor of the hallway. She was going to have quite a lump on that shapely white elbow. Mrs. Norman gave me a look that would sour milk, then bent to take care of the fallen woman.

  Jack Bromhead was in my face. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Cobb? Is that the way you tell a woman her husband’s lying all bloody and dead not fifty yards away?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said that’s what her stepson thinks. At least, that’s what he says he thinks.”

  Bromhead backed off a little. “Yeah. Well, I think so too, I guess. It was still a pretty tactless way of going about it.”

  “I’ll apologize when she wakes up. I’ve just been kicked in the head—see this lump?—and choked, and I’m still a little wrought up, you know?”

  “Barry kicked you?” Bromhead’s voice said he didn’t believe it. “Barry choked you?”

  “Yeah, and then took off for parts unknown.” I decided to save his accusations for a while. I was none too popular around here as it was.

  “I never would have thought he had it in him,” Norman said. He sounded proud.

  “I didn’t either,” I said. “That’s how he got to me.”

  “I still don’t know what the heck you were doing up there, anyway,” Norman said.

  “Scouting camera locations,” I said, more or less telling the truth. “Do you have the camera, Jack?”

  Bromhead held it up for me to see. He didn’t hand it to me. “You’re getting mighty bossy for a house guest, Cobb.”

  “Oh, get stuffed,” said Roxanne Schick. “Cobb’s had experience investigating murders. What have you got? There aren’t likely to be any cops here any time soon.”

  I wanted to kiss her. Not that what she’d said would do any good with the anti-Cobb faction, but it was nice to have the moral support.

  Norman answered her. It occurred to me he was pretty mouthy for a servant, but I didn’t say anything.

  “There’s a cop here already,” Norman said.

  This aroused interest. There was a general chorus of “Where is he?” and “How did he get here?”

  “Been here all along. My nephew, Ralph Ingersoll.” He pointed to the driver like Ed Sullivan pointing to the Moiseyev Dancers. “He’s a deputy sheriff in this county. Got a badge and everything. Show them your badge, Ralph.”

  Ralph looked as though what he’d like to do was go bury himself in a snow drift. Instead, he reached inside a pocket, took out a leather folder, showed an engraved piece of silvery metal for three seconds, then stuffed it back in his pocket as though he were ashamed of it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Glad to have someone in charge. Do you have orders for us, Deputy?”

  Ralph stood there.

  “Look,” Jack Bromhead said. “The girl’s right. It will be days before anyone can get through here. You’re the only law enforcement we’re likely to get. Looks like you’re in charge, son.”

  Ralph thought it over for a few seconds, going from face to face as though sizing us all up for the first time. Then he set his lips, nodded slightly, let go a deep breath, and said, “Okay, if I’m in charge, I’ll start now. Aunt Agnes, Uncle Fred, you start making breakfast. If you need any help, ask for volunteers. Cobb, you come with me. I want to talk with you in private. The rest of you wait in the room where you had the party last night until breakfast is ready.”

  Spot said, “Moooort.”

  I scratched my head. “Ah, my dog ought to be walked and fed.”

  Norman gave me a sour look. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I did it last night. And I’ll take him out back, so we don’t track up that snow you seem all het up about. You just go with Ralph.”

  I smiled at him. “If it’s okay with Deputy Ingersoll, it’s okay with me.”

  Ralph said, “Yeah, sure,” and led me up the back stairs to his room.

  G. B. Dost didn’t let the help live in conditions as palatial as those of his guests, but they weren’t living in squalor, either. Ralph’s room was clean and modern, and would have cost $175 a night easy if it had been a New York hotel room.

  He waved me to a chair and sat on a bed. He looked at me soberly for a few seconds.

  Then he said, “Help!”

  “Help?”

  “I need your help, Mr. Cobb. I’m in this over my head, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Nobody else seems to think so.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “That’s just Uncle Fred. I scored three touchdowns against Grover Cleveland High in the regionals, and I’ve been God’s gift to the Adirondacks ever since. Please forgive him. He’s down on you because he thinks you’re stealing my thunder.”

  “I’ve had all the thunder I’ll ever heed,” I told him. “I just sort of took charge this morning because I knew what a mess the cops would find when they eventually got here if no one did. Besides, I kind of got to like Dost, in the few hours I knew him.”

  “I didn’t know him. But Uncle Fred liked him a lot. That’s another reason he’s been in your face.”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t know you were a deputy sheriff.”

  “Yeah. I’m a deputy. A special. Per diem. You know what that means, don’t you? I help coordinate snow-plow traffic on county roads. I’d probably be doing that right now, if I wasn’t snowed in up here. I help with crowd control at the county fair. I guard the county jail when one of the regular guys is out sick. I’ve never been to anything like a police academy, and I sure don’t know anything about murder.”

  He opened his hands. “But I did take an oath, you know. And whether I like it or not, I guess I am responsible around here. At least, I can’t figure out any way that I’m not.”

  I couldn’t see any way he wasn’t, either. Under the circumstances, the only difference between Ralph and the Attorney General of the United States was that Ralph was here, and Mr. Thornburgh was in Washington. I made sympathetic noises.

  “That’s why I need your help. I get into New York quite a bit, with the limo-service job. We’ve got a regular de
al with Mr. Dost. Stay over a lot. I read New York papers, and I see the news on TV. I know you’ve busted some tough cases.”

  “It’s not the way you think,” I said. “Those were all cases of having to bust them before they busted me.”

  Ralph grinned. “Is this really any different?”

  “Yeah, it’s different. I’m one of your chief suspects.”

  Oh, come on.”

  “Well, I should be. Motive—who knows? Maybe something to do with the business deal we were up here to handle. Do you know about that?”

  “Dost was going to buy your company. Buying companies is what he did.”

  “That’ll do for now. Wilberforce or Haskell Freed can give you more details when you talk to them. So can Jack Bromhead.

  “Anyway, it could be that for some reason I didn’t want him to buy the Network. Or I was having an affair with his wife, and wanted him out of the way. That’s something a detective squad could check very easily, but you don’t have a detective squad.”

  “I could understand somebody taking a run at the wife, though.”

  Ralph was getting younger and younger before my eyes. Right now, he reminded me of a fourteen-year-old suddenly noticing that his best friend’s mother was built.

  “Or, I could just be nuts.”

  “Anybody could just be nuts,” Ralph said.

  “Right,” I said. “Never forget that. Now. Opportunity. I actually have an alibi for part of the night, but it’s no good.”

  “Why not?”

  “First, because my alibi witnesses are two other Network people, and second, I’m going to ruin the alibi myself.”

  He asked me what I meant. I told him about our little paranoid kaffeeklatch out there on the front steps. He interrupted only once (“A lesbian?”), listening intently, watching my mouth as though actual glimmering pearls of wisdom were dropping from it.

  “Why does that ruin your alibi?” he asked when I was done.

  “Because the body wasn’t out there when we were out there. I don’t know when Dost died—hell, I’m not even one hundred percent sure it’s Dost out there—but his body was not out in the middle of nowhere at three o’clock this morning.”