The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  “I feel that mathematical probability precludes the type of coincidences that happened to that bus,” Lyon said.

  “A hijacking and murder.”

  “Unless they were somehow related.”

  “There could be other explanations.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I came over here to get a rundown on the passengers for possible political motives. Well?”

  “During the evening we spent together it never came up.”

  Rocco heaved himself erect and pushed his brother-in-law by the shoulders. “Come on Norbie. If Lyon had anything he’d give it to you.”

  “Wentworth! Why is it always Wenthworth?” Lyon heard the state police captain say to Rocco as they trudged across the drive to their respective cars.

  He found them sitting on the kitchen counter with wide vacant grins and the empty martini pitcher between them. Kim giggled and Bea hiccuped.

  “You’re both squiffed.”

  “IT HASN’T BEEN MY MOST FAVORITE DAY, WENTWORTH,” Bea said, hiccuped again, and dropped her hearing aid into the empty martini pitcher.

  “Yesterday wasn’t a winner for me either.” He momentarily considered joining them, but rejected the thought with the knowledge that they had too much of a head start. “Beddy-bye time.”

  Bea nearly fell from the counter and steadied herself with both hands. “Yes, let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

  “Stonewall Jackson on his deathbed,” Kim said. “How about, ‘Show me the trees, Lennie.’”

  “Trees?”

  “Rabbits, then, something like that.”

  “Oh, boy.” Lyon helped Kim from the counter. He guided her into the living room and let her fall face forward, fully clothed onto the couch. Before he could cover her with a light blanket she had turned on her side and begun to snore lightly.

  The phone rang as he returned to the kitchen and he picked it from the wall mounting. “Yes?”

  “Lyon Wentworth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw it on television news tonight—about the bus. Surprised to hear from me?”

  “Who is this?” Bea had her arms around his neck and nibbled at his ear.

  “You know damn well who it is, Wentworth. And after yesterday and today, you can hardly be surprised that I know who you are. Jesus, a whole bus! You really don’t give a damn, do you? I know you had to waste that punk yesterday, but a whole bus.”

  “Who is this?” Lyon asked again as Bea’s hand flipped open the buttons of his shirt.

  “The old man wanted me to congratulate you. You took care of both our problems.”

  “What problem?”

  “You know damn well what problem, and you destroyed the merchandise, too. We’ll take the usual steps tomorrow.” The phone clicked dead.

  “An admirer?” she asked and kissed him.

  5

  As he parked in front of the Murphysville police station, Lyon decided that possibly Norbie was right. The building did resemble a Reform synagogue. The similarity wasn’t so much in the lines of the low windows as the mural on the side that could be construed as a burning bush.

  He entered the small lobby with its glass partition and stopped when he heard the sound of Muzak. Shaking his head, he bent toward the speech hole. A pert policewoman with shiny cheeks, sitting before a massive group of radio equipment and a computer terminal, smiled at him. He had the impression of being in a dentist’s reception area rather than the cramped police headquarters scrunched between the village library and the tax assessor’s office that he had been used to.

  “Rocco around?”

  “Chief Herbert? One moment, sir.” She pressed a button on a console and her low conversation was lost to Lyon. The policewoman was another addition, and then he remembered that Mary Douglas, who had fought the ancient telephone switchboard and sometimes-working radio system for years, had retired last month.

  She gave him a smile again and sounded a buzzer that opened a door to the station’s interior. “The chief expects you, sir. Second door to the right.”

  Rocco’s brogans had already rutted two lines into the shiny surface of the long mahogany desk. On a credenza to his rear the familiar old percolator still wheezed. Some things didn’t change.

  Lyon shook his head. “The computer terminal’s new and so is the twenty-year-old desk sergeant.”

  “She’s not a sergeant. Like the hardware, huh? You ought to see the pistol range in the basement and the new cruisers.”

  “But Muzak?”

  “That was Martha’s idea, but the rest is courtesy of Uncle Sam’s LEAA funds with matching state grants. You name it and I’ve applied for it. Did I tell you about the helicopter?”

  “How about a SWAT team?”

  “Do you know they tried to give me an armored personnel carrier and some bazookas?”

  “For the school crossing guards, no doubt.”

  “Funny.” Rocco slipped a typewritten list across the desk. “Here’s the list of deceased passengers.”

  “What about Collins?”

  “Negative. The information he listed was fake. He gave a nonexistent address in Orlando.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. They’re still running down all the families of the victims, checking with the insurance companies and all that, but it’ll take days.”

  “So, everyone is looking in Collins’ direction?”

  “Whose name isn’t Collins. The only thing they have to go on is a photograph taken of him after the hijacking incident.”

  “He could be running from something else.”

  “I know. A wife, another crime.”

  “I have the feeling that Collins is tied into all that happened.”

  “NYPD hasn’t been able to turn up any link between any of the passengers and the hijacker. Norbie could be right, the killings could be a terrorist act.”

  “I had a strange phone call last night. A man said he’d seen the bus fire on the television news. I was supposed to know him. He said he knew I had to take out the hijacker, but why a whole bus?”

  “Sounds like a crank call.”

  “He ended up by saying that I had taken care of both problems and that they’d take the usual steps.”

  “A nut.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What did he sound like?”

  “General American dialect with nothing distinctive about his voice.”

  “Then I wouldn’t pay any attention to it.”

  The telephone on Rocco’s desk buzzed melodically. The large chief flicked the receiver to his ear, nodded into it, and hung up. “NYPD has sent up a liaison detective to hold our hands.”

  “Why here?”

  “You got me.” He opened the door and admitted a bulky thirtyish man in rumpled clothes. Rocco stuck out his hand with a grip Lyon knew was reserved for occasions of this sort, and he inwardly winced at the pressure he knew would be applied on the New York detective’s hand. “Rocco Herbert.”

  “Sean Hilly.” He didn’t wince.

  “Grab a chair, Hilly. You got ID?”

  The detective slouched into a side chair and flipped his wallet across the desk at Rocco. Rocco examined the identification closely, looked up at the detective twice, slowly folded the wallet, and handed it back. “Detective Sergeant Hilly, this is my friend, Lyon Wentworth.”

  Lyon and Hilly waved at each other.

  “I don’t understand this liaison bit,” Rocco said. “You’ve got the wrong jurisdiction. The state cops are handling this one. If you want the guy to contact, see Captain Norbert at the barracks.”

  “Somebody else will cover that. The commissioner is very concerned about this situation, feels that the honor of the city is at stake or some goddamn thing. We want that nothing happens to Mr. Wentworth.”

  “I’m staying off buses for a few days.”

  Rocco leaned back in the groaning swivel chair. He folded his
arms behind his neck and glared at the other police officer. “We think we’re capable of taking care of Lyon.”

  “I didn’t know I had to be taken care of.” Lyon had the feeling his remark was lost in the obvious antagonism between the two law officers.

  Sean Hilly smiled crookedly and threw a rumpled leg over the chair arm and fumbled for a cigarette from a crushed pack in his shirt pocket. “Let me say that I didn’t ask for this assignment. I got night courses at John Jay and don’t need time here in the boonies.”

  Rocco’s chair creaked forward as his facial muscles relaxed. “Okay, it’s not your fault. They dig up anything in the city?”

  “Not that I know of. I was off yesterday and got the call at home to come up here.”

  “Where do you live in the city, Sergeant?” Lyon asked.

  “Me? Live in that cesspool? Hell, I got a nice split out on the Island.”

  “Since I’m not investigating this case,” Rocco said, “what are we supposed to liaison about?”

  “Got me. They just want me up here. Told me to keep a low profile and an eye on Wentworth.”

  “Because most of the witnesses are dead?”

  The detective shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “It might not be a bad idea to keep low for a while, Lyon.”

  “That’s what our people thought,” Hilly said as he located a battered cigarette lighter, which he tried to work, to no avail.

  “Not necessarily so,” Lyon said. “We don’t know the motive behind the destruction of the bus. One thing I do know is that I do not possess any information that would justify anyone making an attempt on my life.”

  Sergeant Hilly’s face curved into a smile. “Okay, Wentworth. You’re on home turf and outa’ our jurisdiction. Come on, tell me. It was your gun that you used to blow away the bastard, wasn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “You saw who slipped it to you?”

  “He was behind me.”

  “You’d recognize him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know that.”

  “We’re not even sure if there is a connection between the man who gave me the gun and all else that happened.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to be safe,” Rocco said. “Why don’t you and Bea take a vacation? To Bermuda? In fact, don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

  “Bea’s in the midst of a primary fight—impossible.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. Come on, let’s get some lunch.”

  Sarge’s Bar was squeezed between two clapboard three-family homes in a predominantly residential area. The local zoning board defended this nonconformity by using as their defense that when Sarge Renfroe applied for a permit, they couldn’t understand what he was saying. Since the board met at eight in the evening, and Sarge was rarely decipherable after seven, this could very well be true.

  Rocco parked and turned to Hilly in the rear seat. “Not much to look at, but he serves a generous roast beef sandwich at a good price.”

  Hilly looked at the bar’s facade with an arched eyebrow. “You country cops got it made. They don’t like us going into places like this unless we’re working vice.”

  “Huh?” Rocco turned toward the front of the building. His mouth gaped open as he vaulted from the car to examine the large banner draped across the front of the building. “Oh, my God!”

  GRAND OPENING

  SARGE’S TOPLESS FROLICS

  Inside, they saw that the liquor bottles and streaked mirror had been removed from behind the bar to make room for a small runway. Speakers on either side blared loud disco while a topless dancer in bikini panties gyrated awkwardly. The booths and bar stools had been ripped out and piled in the backyard and were replaced by a mass of small tables and straight chairs. The former regulars sat sullenly in a far corner clutching their draft beers.

  “Renfroe!” Rocco’s voice cut over the loud music. Sarge, who had been leaning against the ancient cash register admiring the dancer, jerked erect and turned to wave a damp bar cloth at Rocco. “Come over here, Renfroe.”

  “I appreciate you guys showing me the high spots of Murphysville,” Hilly said, “but I can get this stuff better in Times Square.”

  Lyon thought of Wobblies and wondered if they were sitting in the police cruiser outside with disapproving glares. “This is a new addition,” he finally managed to say without laughing aloud.

  Rocco and Sarge were now by the door where Rocco’s finger shook under the cowering retired noncom’s nose.

  “You got no right!” Sarge’s voice rose over the music.

  “Girl on the stage can’t dance,” Hilly said, “but she’s got a good bod.”

  “That’s Katty Hemphill,” Lyon replied. “She looks better since her acne went away.”

  “Who’s looking at her face? Or is she jailbait?”

  “She was a high school senior last year so she must be over eighteen.” Lyon left the table to walk toward the men arguing by the door. He glanced at Katty Hemphill and decided she’d look a lot better if she learned to dance without chewing gum. Rocco was reddening as his anger became more obvious. It was time to put a stop to things. “Did you tell Sarge about the liquor laws?”

  “What laws?”

  “About serving alcoholic beverages within the city limits under these circumstances.”

  “The chief’s got no right to put me out of business. You know what I can clear topless?”

  “You’re right, Sarge,” Lyon replied. “And all you have to do to keep him out of your hair is to serve near beer and nonalcoholic wine. Then you’re home free.”

  “No kidding?”

  “That’s what the better dirty places in New York do.”

  “Right, Chief?” He turned to Rocco beseechingly.

  Rocco glanced sideways at Lyon as the anger drained from his face. “That’s about it, First. Take out the booze and you can have orgies in here.”

  “Great, man. Great.” Sarge turned, took two steps before spinning back toward them. “Take out the booze? You’re crazy!”

  “It’s sort of up to you, Sarge. Booze or boobs, so to speak.”

  “That right?” He looked quizzically from Rocco to Lyon.

  “Absolutely,” Lyon said.

  Sarge Renfroe considered his alternatives for three seconds before turning back toward the bar. “Katty Hemphill! Get the hell off there and get some clothes on!”

  Sean Hilly nearly choked on a large mug of beer as they sat down. “You’re all right, Wentworth. All right. I hope to God you don’t get knocked off.”

  The Secretary of the State for Connecticut sat behind her desk before blue drapes and deep carpeting and despised herself for the massive headache that consumed her.

  Kimberly Ward, deputy to the Secretary, clutched a clipboard before her as she sat heavily on the long couch. “You want to go over this list or just call it a day?”

  “At nine in the morning?”

  “Well, there is one minor little item on today’s agenda.”

  “Nothing requiring a great deal of effort, I hope.”

  “The document is called the constitution of the state, and it seems to require that you officially put the legislature in recess today.”

  Bea groaned. The constitution stipulated the length of the legislative session, and midnight today was the mandatory recess time. She remembered two years ago when the state income tax bill was under debate and they’d forced her to stop the clock at five minutes to the witching hour. The clock had remained stopped for eight hours. “How’s the calendar look?”

  “They moved along fine yesterday, but you know how it is at the end of the session.”

  “Maybe they’ll voice vote.”

  Kim raised an eyebrow. “In an election year? I could get my more militant friends to make a bomb threat.”

  Bea put her head in her hands. “Promises, promises. Anything else on your doomsday board?”

  “Dottie took a call first thing
this morning.” She glanced at the board. “A Mr. Raven Marsh has an appointment to see you. He says he’s a free-lance writer.”

  “Not today.”

  “Too late. He’s on his way. You can’t cancel appointments with news writers and win elections.”

  “What paper is he with?”

  “A magazine writer. Then there’s the delegation from Miss Porter’s school at eleven, and a speech before the University Club at noon.”

  “Will my opponent be there?”

  “You know it.”

  “This afternoon we can sleep it off.”

  “At two the new interns from Trinity, a news conference at six. You had better have a short dinner and get back, in case the legislature manages to break early.”

  Bea took the clipboard from Kim and contemplated the day’s activities. They were a fine testimonial for abstinence. The intercom rang and she answered with a “Yes, Dottie?”

  “A Mr. Raven Marsh is here to see you.”

  “Show him in.”

  The day had begun.

  6

  Intermittent bursts of jagged flame ejaculated into the fog.

  Lyon steered his pickup off the highway onto a grassy slope and slowed to a stop. He bent over the steering wheel and craned his neck to look up at the large round shapes spotted across the field that were beginning to rise through the mist.

  “You’ll have to admit they are beautiful.”

  Bea yawned. “Nothing is beautiful at six in the morning.”

  “As soon as the sun’s well up, this fog will burn off. The weather report says a three-to-four-mile-an-hour wind. It’s going to be perfect launch weather.”

  Bea yawned again and covered her mouth with her hand. “Excuse me if I continually fail to get excited over hot air balloons.”

  He put the truck in gear and began to move slowly across the field, threading his way around campers, station wagons, and other pickups, all next to balloons in varying stages of inflation. A man stepped directly in their path and raised both hands. Lyon braked and rolled down the window. “Morning, Max. Looks like a better turnout than last year’s meet.”

  Maximus Popov, bearded, with bandy legs and casklike torso now partially covered by a bright red down vest, walked toward the truck and leaned in the window. “That you, Wentworth?”