Bea quickly recounted the story of the Shep child. When she had finished there was a pause on the other end of the line. “Let me understand this,” the governor said. “You want me to call the governor of New York who is to call the mayor of the city who is to call the commissioner to send a social worker …”
“Within the hour.”
“To some address on West Seventy-fourth Street.”
“Yes, Ruth. That’s what I want.”
“It’s very important to you?”
“Very.”
“If this weren’t an election year …”
“You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it,” the governor said. “But, please, not too many of these.”
For the hundredth time Willie Shep moved down the bus. Lyon gripped the gun in a sweaty palm. The face on the approaching hijacker seemed made of sand as the features flowed across a bare skull, changing in ever continuous patterns until merging into a malevolent grin as he stopped by the seat in front of Lyon and aimed. Lyon fired through the newspaper and watched again as the skull flew apart.
He awoke with a start. His neck was cricked from the uncomfortable position on the easy chair in the Herbert living room. The half-finished coffee on the floor beside him was cold and blotched. As he pushed himself erect, the myriad aches from the balloon accident telegraphed their presence in short shooting pains. He felt two hundred years old.
It was the phone that had awakened him, and he lurched down the hallway toward the telephone table.
The house was quiet. The small sounds that signal occupancy were missing. He was alone except for the Murphysville police cruiser stationed in the driveway with the young patrolman and his shotgun. It had been a fitful day peopled with nightmares that marred spasmodic sleep.
Bea’s note, pinned to clean clothes piled neatly by the sofa bed, had disturbed him.
Lyon—here are clean things. Stay in bed as long as you can. Do not leave the house. Repeat. Do not pass go. The watch-bird is watching you. I have gone to New York for some shopping. Love, B.
It seemed an odd time for her to purchase a new winter wardrobe.
He picked up the phone and felt a twinge in his elbow that had escaped earlier notice. “Yes.”
“For the man who’s supposed to be the best, you’re sure screwing things up, Wentworth.”
“Who is this?”
“Cut the coy bit. My friends in the Big Apple tell me you missed Nick.”
“Nick who?” It was unmistakably the same voice as the other call.
“What I don’t understand is, why didn’t you take him out when you blew away the punk?”
“How come you’re so sure I’m your man?”
“I appreciate your cover, but it’s been blown. You’ve been doing jobs for us for ten years now, and you’re the only one we work with that uses a forty-four Magnum.”
“I think we ought to meet.”
“That’s a switch. It must mean you have the merchandise. The old man says that every day with the stuff loose is dangerous. He’s authorized me to pay you a bonus when Nick is out of the way and you deliver the merchandise. He’s worried, and I don’t like him worrying. You have a week, Wentworth. A week to take care of things, or somebody you don’t know comes looking for you.”
The phone went dead in Lyon’s hand and he slowly hung up. He had thought the first call was possibly a crank, but now with the second, it all began to make a little sense.
9
“… A week to take care of things, or somebody you don’t know comes looking for you.”
They sat quietly for a moment in Rocco’s office after the recording of the phone call ended. Rocco’s feet thumped to the floor as he pushed off his swivel chair and began to pace in front of Lyon, Raven, and Sean Hilly. His arms made short chopping motions. “Who the hell is that joker?”
“Seems to me that the somebody he is going to send after Lyon has already arrived,” Raven said.
“How’s that?” Hilly asked from his deep slouch in a side chair.
“I’m thinking about the rigged balloon accident.”
“I’m not altogether sure I like my phone calls bugged, Rocco.”
“It was my own phone.”
“Then how did he know I was there?”
“I wanted to cover all the angles. After the first call we put an intercept out at your place. When he called Nutmeg Hill the second time I had the policewoman on duty answer and give him my number.”
“Could you trace the call?”
“Not nearly enough time.”
“Right after my unknown friend called, Bea telephoned from New York. She’s checked into the hijacker’s background and is convinced that he didn’t have any political motivations.”
“We have that recorded, too.”
Lyon frowned. “Pardon me, I’d momentarily forgotten I was being monitored.”
Hilly changed the angle of his slouch. “It’s the usual bit, then. All the hijacker was after was the money. Out-and-out greed.”
“And some skewered notion about what life owed him. Bea’s assessment is good enough for me.” Lyon began to pace as Rocco slumped back in his chair. “We know more than we did.”
“How’s that?”
“We thought the first phone call might have been a crank, the second proves it wasn’t. The caller is convinced that we have a connection.”
Raven looked at his notes for a moment and then stuck his pen behind his ear. “I have always thought I was as imaginative as the next man, but this is confusing. The caller thinks you’re working for him, and if you don’t get Nick in a week he’ll send somebody after you. But somebody has already tried to kill you in the balloon. It’s upside down.”
Lyon stopped by the window and looked out over the tree-shaded street leading toward the green. “If we make a basic assumption or two, it all begins to make sense. Let’s assume that the phone caller hired a gunman.”
“Gunman?” Hilly snorted. “You don’t hear that word on the street anymore. Say somebody put out a contract.”
“A contract on the man called Nick.”
“In that case, the hit man is the one who gave you the gun.”
Raven sighed and put away his notes. “What about the mysterious Major Collins?”
“Seems to me that the bus is getting awfully crowded,” Hilly said. “A hijacker who kills people, a hit man, and a target.”
“The hijacking was a coincidental event that acted as a catalyst. I lean to the theory that the man who gave me the gun is the hit man and Collins is the target. I was given the gun so the killer wouldn’t have to expose himself.”
Rocco drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. “I don’t know. That could be it, but it’s hard to believe that he’d blow up a bus to kill all the witnesses and also try and take you out on the off chance you might recognize him.”
“It fits if the killer thought the target was on the bus that morning. The death of the others was unimportant to him. He wanted to get one specific person.”
“That brings it back to you.”
“No, not yet. He was trying to kill Collins, but Collins left the hotel early that morning. A fact that was unknown to everyone except the two New York detectives on duty at the hotel.”
Rocco looked thoughtful. “And you roomed with Collins that last night.”
“There’s no secret about that. Now, at that point the killer assumes that Collins told me something, perhaps it concerned what the caller refers to as the merchandise.”
“Which is what?”
“If we knew that, we’d know the answer to almost everything.”
“So he tried to eliminate you on the chance that you know something. That Collins told you something that night. Which is what?”
“Damned if I know. He’s certainly sure by this time that I can’t identify him.”
“You said that Collins knew who you were.”
“Yes, he had bought one of my books for his grandson.”
/> “What about your other interests?”
“I mentioned hot air ballooning to him.”
“No, I mean your past involvement in certain investigations.”
“He mentioned it briefly, almost offhandedly.”
“Did he give you any sort of message?”
“If he did, it wasn’t anything recognizable.”
“Is it possible?”
Lyon reviewed the short conversation that had lasted only a few minutes in the hotel room. “He admitted that he was not an army officer, and then went on to say he was involved in a war of another sort.” Again, he went over in detail the conversation and the signing of the book. The inscription before his … “There was something written in the book, something about the secret of the karst followed by a little drawing.”
“What in hell does that mean?”
“What about the drawing?” Hilly injected.
“It seemed a private thing, so of course I didn’t ask.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Vaguely. It resembled a microscope drawing of a blood vessel, but not like any I’ve ever seen. And yet, it did look like something I’d seen before, but it eludes me for the moment.”
“And you think everything ties into those two phone calls?” Hilly asked.
“Yes, and they make a good deal of sense in a certain context. Let’s say the caller hired a hit man but doesn’t know his identity. He sees newsreel footage of the bus at the aftermath of the hijacking, he can identify the target, and knows that a forty-four Magnum is always used. Then my name appears as the one who shot the hijacker with a forty-four.”
“Which makes him positive that you’re the one with the contract.”
“And now there’s a bonus for returning what he calls the merchandise.”
“Okay, the caller is convinced Lyon is the hit man, while on the other hand the real killer thinks he got Collins on the bus and now wants to eliminate Lyon on the chance that Collins told him something that night in the hotel room.”
“It puts me in the middle,” Lyon said.
“I would say so.”
“I don’t like Bea alone in the city under these circumstances.” Lyon started for the door. “I’m going after her.”
“Not without backup you aren’t.”
“I’ll go with him,” Hilly said. “When we get to the city I can get him all the protection he needs.”
“You got a piece?”
Hilly flipped open his jacket to reveal a holstered service revolver. “Ready for bear.”
“Raven?”
“I don’t ordinarily carry a weapon. I did hoist an M-16 on a couple of trips in Africa when we were in dangerous country, however …”
Rocco shook his head. “Are you going with them?”
“Oh, no. I thought I’d check in with Kim and get some more background. I’ll leave the other stuff to the professionals.”
“Fine.” As Lyon and Hilly left, Rocco picked up the phone. “Get me Captain Nesbitt in New York,” he told the switchboard. While waiting for his connection, he impatiently drummed his fingers on the desk. “One hell of a liaison man you are,” he said half aloud. He looked pensive, and when the phone rang he snatched it up. “Nesbitt? Rocco Herbert here … the chief in Murphysville … right … I have some news for you on the bus case, but first, about your liaison man up here … Hilly. Sergeant Sean Hilly who you sent up here to sit on my shoulder … Hilly, damn it!… What do you mean you didn’t send any liaison man?”
“We could have gone by the motel and picked up my vehicle, Mr. Wentworth.” Hilly turned the pickup onto the Connecticut Turnpike access ramp.
“Lyon, please, Sergeant.”
“Right. Call me Sean.” He accelerated the truck to sixty and frowned as the frame vibrated until he reduced the speed to a more moderate fifty.
“Probably should replace this thing, but we use it mostly as a balloon chase car, which explains the radio and four-wheel drive.”
“The doorman at your wife’s hotel will flip when we pull up.” He thought of the long bramble scratches along the body of the truck. A moving cloud path released rain in windblown sheets that speckled the front window. Hilly fumbled for the wiper control and flipped them on.
The dashboard lights cast a glow around Hilly’s chin and covered the lower part of his face in a dim light. The upper part of his face was in shadows, which gave him a slightly ominous look. Lyon studied the New York sergeant. There was something familiar about him … the man with the gold badge.… No, it couldn’t be. He was getting paranoid to the point where he had begun to suspect the most unlikely individuals. But still …
“You live on the Island, Sean?”
“Yep.”
“You said you have a split-level. I would suppose a wife and children go along with that?”
“Boy and girl, ten and fourteen. Even have some of your books in the house. One of them about queer-looking animals.”
“The Wobblies.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s them.” He lapsed into silence.
“Have you worked with Nesbitt long?”
“Nesbitt? I’m new on the task force and don’t know many of the guys.” He glanced over at Lyon. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were questioning me.”
“Didn’t mean it to sound that way,” Lyon said, which wasn’t actually the case. The truck’s forward momentum was cut drastically as it pulled into the right-hand emergency lane. “Something the matter?”
“That tollbooth ahead,” Hilly leaned forward and brushed the misted windshield with his sleeve. “Bunch of cops are stopped—like they’re forming a roadblock.”
“Oh?” Lyon rolled down the side window and stuck his head out. The rain had begun to slacken, and a mile ahead he could see the toll station with a line of cruisers parked in front of several booths, forcing traffic to funnel through two toll stations where troopers peered into each car. The pickup slowed to a stop. “What’s the matter?”
“You said this hulk had a radio.” The voice was cold.
“Under the dash. We use it for communication with the balloon.”
“I don’t give a damn what you use it for.” He fumbled with the CB set. “Does it get police calls?”
“Yes.” Lyon’s hand inched toward the door handle as Hilly located the police band and tuned it in. “I want to get to the city.”
Hilly didn’t answer, but kept one hand on the radio while the other flipped open a button of his jacket.
“Car Nineteen. I have subject vehicle on the south lane near the Murphysville toll station.”
The pickup jerked ahead as Hilly threw it in gear. Lyon pushed down the door handle and levered his body across the seat. “Stay put! Close the door.” Hilly had drawn his revolver from the clip holster at his belt and had it pressed against Lyon’s side. He swung the truck in an arc across three lanes. The pickup left the highway and careened down a grassy slope of the divider. As the truck reached the culvert at the bottom, he slammed it into four-wheel drive and drove up the other side into the northbound lanes.
Troopers ran for their cars.
“Goddamn heap!” Hilly snarled. “Why don’t you have a decent set of wheels?”
“It’s been adequate.”
“Aw, shut up!” The truck vibrated as it approached seventy, and at seventy-five Lyon thought it would literally fly apart. There were now three cars behind them with sirens and flashing dome lights. They were gaining rapidly.
With an abrupt movement of the wheel, Hilly turned the truck toward the road edge, battered through a wire guard rail, and began to push up a brushy slope. In tanklike fashion, it plunged through small brush and knocked down saplings.
As their forward momentum carried them through a heavy mass of foliage, a large tree loomed ahead, only a few feet from the nose of the truck. Lyon braced his legs and threw his hands before his face as they struck the tree. The impact threw them both forward against the dash and windshield.
Dazed
, Lyon fumbled for the gun and received an elbow in the midsection.
Hilly lunged from the car and then turned to level the muzzle of the pistol at Lyon’s forehead. Several state troopers left their cars at the bottom of the hill and ran toward them with drawn guns.
The gun barrel touched Lyon’s head. “You know, Wentworth, you really should get it.”
At the bottom of the slope, Rocco Herbert pulled his car off the highway and wedged it between two state cars. He found Norbert standing in the headlight glare of one of the empty cars.
“What’s up?”
“He has a gun and just ran into those trees. My men are after him.”
“Lyon?”
“Still in the truck.”
They began to trot up the hill toward the disabled truck. As they approached it, they saw Lyon slumped against the dashboard. Rocco tugged at the door, which the force of the collision had jammed shut. He cupped his hand against the window and looked toward the still form of his friend. He braced his feet, and grasped the handle with both hands and tugged. With a whine of screeching metal, the door opened and he reached for Lyon’s shoulders.
Norbert’s flashlight spilled across them as Rocco levered Lyon from the car. As he did, Lyon stood. “Are you all right?”
“He had the gun six inches from me … I thought he was going to shoot. He didn’t, but why?”
“I don’t know. I did find out that he’s an imposter.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“We’ve got him, Captain!” Norbert turned his light toward the trees where two troopers, supporting a handcuffed Hilly between them, emerged from the brush.
“Is he clean?”
“Is now.” The first trooper handed a revolver to Norbert.
The captain looked down at the gun and then at Hilly. “Let’s see that ID you’re so proud of.”
“In my back pocket.”
The second trooper took the wallet from the prisoner’s pocket and handed it to Rocco. Rocco glanced at it a moment. “This is what he showed me in my office the day he arrived.”
“All right, Hilly, or whatever your name is. You going to make it easy on yourself, or do you want it the hard way?”
Lyon stood before the one-way glass and looked into the interrogation room at the state police barracks. Flanked by Rocco and Norbert, Hilly sat at a table nervously sucking on a cigarette. The reels of a recording machine turned slowly.
The Death in the Willows Page 10
