by P. L. Gaus
Inside the house, it appeared that nothing had been touched. The place was still a cluttered mess, even where the fire hadn’t reached. Branden tried unsuccessfully to match this image with the meticulous office Britta had kept. Signs of a search. With this written, he stepped back through the rubble in the kitchen and noted the place in the study where someone had pulled papers out of Britta’s files and made a point of burning them separately. Needed to destroy files went into his notebook.
Outside again, Branden took his pocketknife and began working one of the larger pieces of glass from the trunk of a tree. With his back turned to the house, he heard the metallic clicks and snappings of a lever-action rifle being chambered and cocked. Without surprise, he turned slowly to see Jimmy Weston pointing a carbine at his chest.
“Figured you wouldn’t let it be,” Weston said. “What gave me away?”
“Backfires, Jimmy,” Branden said pointedly.
“I don’t get it,” Weston said.
“You didn’t tell Ricky Niell you heard a backfire the first time he talked to you out at Weaver’s accident.”
“That’s all?”
“Your windows were down, Jimmy.”
“Air conditioner’s on the fritz.”
“You, most of all, should have heard the shot. I figure you heard it well enough, and probably saw Yoder, too, over by the trees.”
Weston nodded grimly. “It took a couple of minutes to figure the whole thing out. Murder Britta, frame Yoder, and all. But I reasoned that when the deputy came around again, I should tell him I heard a backfire just like everyone else.”
“That phone call, supposedly from the Dover hospital. That was weak,” Branden commented.
“Got cut up with the explosion,” Weston said. “What else could I do?”
“You should have left Britta alone in the first place!” Branden shot.
“You’re the only one who knows about any of this, Branden.”
“I’ve turned in everything I have to the sheriff’s office,” Branden proclaimed.
“Sure you have, Professor. How could I expect anything less? But I won’t be around long enough for that to matter.”
“I wrote it all down, Jimmy. Gave it to Captain Newell. I’m surprised he hasn’t arrested you by now.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I am not, Jimmy.”
“So let’s hear it,” Weston challenged.
“OK. Monday. You got to Yoder early in the evening. Kept him drunk for the next couple of days. Drunk and off his lithium. You, if anyone, would have known what that would do to him, as unpredictable as he was on the job. Tuesday you’ll have made one last try, talking Britta out of it. That didn’t work, so Wednesday night, you killed her at her home. Or maybe it was early Thursday morning.
“Next, you set fire to her house, drove her body to Yoder’s, and planted her in his trunk and the gas can in his carport. You also arranged some things for us at the trailer, like the rifle and 30-06 cartridges we found. Probably those hunting photos in a dresser drawer, too. I’ll bet you even typed the letter we found in Yoder’s printer. Then you drove Yoder to his parents’ house, ostensibly because you were worried about him.
“Friday, you made a point of calling Becker. It was just good fortune that I was there when he took that call. But that cemented your alibi for the cuts on your face. Then you sat tight.
“But by Monday, you couldn’t take the pressure anymore, so you gave Newell that tip. Got us a warrant for Yoder’s home. Does that about cover it, Weston?”
Weston was agitated. He circled around behind Branden, jammed the muzzle of the rifle between his shoulder blades, and pushed the professor down the slope, onto the back patio, and around to the side driveway where Branden’s car was parked beside the house.
“Open your trunk, Professor.”
Branden took keys out of his jeans pocket, unlocked the trunk, and slowly lifted the lid.
Holding himself several paces back, Weston said, “Now get inside and toss me the keys.”
Branden complied, dropped the keys on the ground near the bumper, and waited, kneeling in the bottom of his trunk.
“Lie down with your back to me,” Weston commanded.
“You’re not going to get away with this, Jimmy.”
“Lie down, Professor, and shut up.”
Once Branden was curled up with his back to the rear, Weston came forward slowly, holding the rifle on Branden. He bent quickly to pick up the keys, reached up with his left hand, and slammed the trunk lid shut.
His voice muffled from inside the trunk, Branden shouted, “I wrote it all down for Bobby Newell, Weston. You’re not helping yourself any,” and immediately began the slow task of turning himself around inside the small trunk.
“You just hang tight, Professor. I’ve got to figure out what to do with you.”
Weston ran down the curving drive to his battered yellow truck and hauled himself up into the cab, then slumped momentarily behind the wheel, exhausted from the week of watching, waiting, and guiding the investigation toward Yoder. Just now, with the professor, he had been calm. Murder was easier the second time around. Or maybe, he thought, he was just numb. Probably that. Numb since the day Britta had told him she was selling him out to Holmes Estates. Numb with humiliation and the disgrace of losing his business.
In Millersburg, he stopped in the alley behind his office building and took a red gasoline can out of the garage behind the Victorian house. At a filling station, he used a credit card at the pump, so that he would not have to go in to pay for gas. And as he drove back through town, the magnitude of his problems seemed to rush hotly into his mind, confounding his thoughts, overwhelming his emotions. This was instinct, now. A plodding, mechanical fixation on being free of it all. As irreversible as a plunge off a cliff.
His eyes fixed on the pavement in front of him as he drove, and he began to curse Britta Sommers out loud. To curse the days in high school when they had dated. To curse her for marrying Arden Dobrowski. To curse her for buying into Weston Surveying to keep his business going. To curse her for letting Holmes Estates force him out. And, crying silently, to curse her for not understanding in time that he would have to kill her. That she had left him no choice.
On Route 62 outside of town, he dried his eyes and traveled east to Britta’s driveway. He felt detached from his actions as his growling diesel truck crawled back up the winding drive to Sommers’s house. He backed slowly into the stand of pines near the house, and pulled forward, pointing the nose of the truck down the drive. He left the engine running, lifted the can of gasoline out of the bed of his truck, and screwed on the white flexible spout as he walked back to Branden’s car.
Starting at the trunk and working methodically forward, he splashed gasoline over Branden’s car and on the ground surrounding it. When he had finished at the front hood, some gas remained in his can, and this he poured out under the trunk of the car and in a line that descended the driveway to a point near his diesel, some twenty yards away.
He put the empty gas can back in the bed of his truck, reached into the cab, and took out a box of kitchen matches. He held three together and dragged the heads across the striker plate on the box until they caught. Then he tossed the burning matches onto the end of the gasoline fuse.
The fire leaped along the fuse quickly, reached the car, and erupted, with a loud whoosh, into a giant ball of orange and yellow flame. The flash of the ignition forced Weston backward with his arm thrown over his eyes. He crouched, shielding his eyes, and hurried around to the front of his truck, protected, now, to a certain extent, from the heat.
When he drew himself up straight and opened his eyes, he found himself staring down the barrel of Branden’s .38 revolver.
Branden cocked the hammer with his gun hand, and held a pair of handcuffs out in his left, saying, “One would think, Jimmy, that you’d have learned your lesson about pouring too short a fuse.”
30
Wednesday, Augu
st 16
11:15 A.M.
ANDY Weaver descended the narrow steps from Henry DiSalvo’s law office ahead of Cal Troyer. The Dutchman stepped out onto the sidewalk with the pastor and blinked in the bright morning sun. He popped his straw hat on his head, studied the sidewalk for a moment, and frowned.
Cal slapped him on the back and asked, “What are you going to do?”
Weaver shook his head slowly from side to side. “It is a great lot of money, Cal,” he said.
“You have to think of this as an opportunity,” Cal said.
“Temptation, Cal,” Weaver replied softly. He cast his eyes down the sidewalk and stared for several minutes. “Do you ever think about quitting?”
“Preaching? No,” Cal answered.
“I’m tired, Cal. Weary to the bone.”
“Find a way to make this money work for good, Andy.”
“It’s too much money for one man,” Weaver said and then seemed to stir from a dream. “Can you come out to the house tomorrow morning? I need to think.”
Cal said, “Sure,” and watched the bishop turn and walk slowly toward the courthouse.
When Weaver reached the light at Clay and Jackson, Cal crossed the street and pushed through the thick walnut doors of Hotel Millersburg. He walked down the long, quiet hallway and found Branden at a table outside in the little courtyard.
Branden had an iced tea, and Cal ordered the same when the waitress appeared. The octagonal picnic table was set in the shade of an old maple tree. Branden leaned forward on his elbows, with calm satisfaction.
When his tea arrived, Cal squeezed lemon into the glass and asked, “You knew your gun was in the trunk?”
“Of course,” Branden said, smiling. “Do you think I’d have let Weston stuff me in there otherwise?”
“And you got out how?”
“Screwdriver. Took about a whole minute.”
“Ellie says you brought him in with cuffs on and then spent more than an hour writing out your conclusions for Newell.”
“I wouldn’t say it took an hour.”
“Ellie timed it at an hour and ten minutes.”
Branden grinned and thought of Ellie out at the front counter, watching the clock. “I had a lot to write.”
“About Weston?”
“Right. His actions over the last week or so, plus his means, motive, and opportunities. The trail he left.”
The waitress returned, took their orders without writing, and ambled back inside to the kitchen.
“What about your session just now with DiSalvo?” Branden asked.
“The will?”
“Right. Why did DiSalvo have to wait this long to read the will?”
“J. R. Weaver had an opening statement. Said his relatives were all hypocrites and the only one who deserved his money would be the one who had never wanted it in the first place. DiSalvo was to give it to the last relative who inquired about an inheritance.”
“Andy Weaver,” Branden whispered, amazed.
“He gets it all,” Cal said. “Never planned on asking for any of it.”
“Just how rich is he?” Branden asked.
“Eleven and a half million, once you cash in all of the stocks and bonds, and pay the taxes.”
Branden whistled. “That’s the last you’ll see of Bishop Andy R. Weaver.”
“Not Andy Weaver,” Cal said and smiled with confidence.
“He’s got nothing in his district but trouble. You said so yourself.”
“Andy Weaver has got visions of building a church, Mike, not a fortune,” Cal said.
“That’s more temptation than any man could withstand.”
“His brother had a problem with greed,” Cal said. “Not Andy. He hasn’t even decided whether or not he’ll accept the money.”
“At the very least, that’s the kind of money that could give him a fresh start somewhere else,” Branden said.
“He’ll stick with the church,” Cal said confidently. “If anything, he’ll consider this to be tainted money. Might not even want it.”
Branden rubbed at his chin and laughed. “Eleven-plus million, and J. R. Weaver couldn’t even give it away.”
“I’m going out to see Andy tomorrow,” Cal said. “I expect he’ll have made up his mind by then.”
The food arrived, and Branden took an eager bite of a club sandwich.
Cal had a soup and salad. Eyeing Branden, he said, “Now it’s your turn. Give it up, Professor.”
“You mean Weston?”
Cal nodded and started in on his salad. “When did you first suspect him?”
“He made a lot of mistakes, Cal.”
“But what was the first one?”
“The first one I caught onto was the flying glass from the explosion at Britta’s house. I knew we were looking for someone who was all cut up. But the first mistake he actually made was not reporting a backfire at the crash scene when he was first interviewed.”
They ate quietly together, enjoying the shade on the patio. Branden finished before Cal, and as he pushed his plate forward on the table, he asked, “What did you and Andy accomplish up at Holmes Estates last Monday?”
As he ate the last of his soup, Cal said, “Andy tried several ploys. First, he asked them to sell the land back to him outright.”
“That wasn’t going to happen,” Branden said.
“I don’t think he expected it to,” Cal said. “Next, he offered to sell them two farms in place of two others. So that the two families who planned to stay in the area could have the better land. That didn’t work, either.”
“Would Weaver have gone for that one if they had agreed?”
“I think so. But I think what he really wanted was the last proposal he made.”
Branden waved the waitress over for more tea, and stirred in sugar when she brought it. “And that was . . . ,” he prompted.
“He offered to sell Holmes Estates the eight farmhouses and five-acre tracts that Weaver hadn’t already sold them. That gave Holmes Estates unbroken stretches of land where the eight farms stand.”
“That I’ll bet they went for,” Branden said.
“Of course. But Weaver said he’d have to check with his families, added that the price would have to be right, and left them there to think about it.”
“So, he’s decided to move the whole lot of them somewhere else,” Branden said. “Do you know where?”
“He has letters out to settlements in several western states,” Cal said.
“I’d sure like to see that, Cal. All those families with their goods piled in buggies and wagons. A convoy at five miles an hour, headed west.”
31
Wednesday, August 16
7:30 P.M.
CAL and Andy Weaver turned into the front drive at the Ader Mast farm in Weaver’s plain black buggy. Weaver pulled to a stop before they reached the house and stared ahead with a look of absolute resolve. Cal sat quietly beside him, nervously considering what Weaver was about to do.
Cal pointed to the slope in front of the barn doors, and there sat two buggies with their horses. The barn door was slid open about two feet, and they could hear horses inside, kicking against their stalls, stamping the dirt, and whinnying nervously. Ader Mast Senior appeared on the front porch of his house, waved them down to the barn, and hurried back inside.
Weaver parked his buggy near the doors to the barn and stepped down. Despite the heat, Weaver was dressed in full black Sunday costume. Cal remained on the buggy seat. He held the scriptures under one arm and observed Weaver expectantly.
Weaver glanced up to Cal and whispered, “Pray, Cal. While I have a go at it. Watch for tricks, but pray! We must be very stern.”
Cal nodded his determination and said, “I’ve already started.”
Inside, Weaver found the two fathers, Homer Yost and David Yoder, standing apprehensively beside the first stall. With them were Weaver’s two preachers, Wayne Hershberger and Ben Yoder. With a severe expression and stiff posture, W
eaver approached the preachers and said in dialect, “For the unity of the Church, we must put a stop to this here and now. Cal Troyer is outside and will assist me if I need it.” He saw the sting of his reproach register in the preachers’ eyes, and figured it was warranted.
To the fathers he said, with authority, “If your sons return to us, you’ll instruct them every day about the Evil One. It is necessary, and you will be watched. I will talk with the boys once each week for many months to come.”
Both fathers nodded vigorously, frightened and very much chastened.
Weaver took the preachers gently aside and, with his eyes cast down because he was embarrassed for the men, he said, “This is where Melvin P. failed. There have been a few boys for several years involved in this. Larry Yoder was one of the first, and he is in the nut house. How could you not have known?”
The one answered, “We are praying, Bischoff. We should have done something.”
“You must not fail to preach against this.”
“We will not fail, Bischoff.”
“Then kneel, now, and pray, Ben. Pray, Wayne, as you have never done before. Pray for the unity and safety of the Church. For peace. For the souls of these two boys. If the Lord does not bless us now, we are lost.”
As the preachers knelt in the straw, Weaver cast his eyes around in the dim light and asked, “The boys?”
The preacher Wayne cleared his throat and stammered, “In the back.”
Weaver peered into the far corner of the barn and saw two lads talking together in the shadows. He took several paces toward them, but turned back to the fathers and said, “Wait outside, please. Pray for your sons.”
Both men shuffled their feet but held to their places, and Weaver intoned, “Go now! Wait outside. When I come out you’ll either have your sons back, or, you’d better believe it, they’ll be lost to us for good.”
When they had left, Weaver whispered gruffly to his preachers, “We wouldn’t be in this mess if those two had been proper fathers.”
The men winced at the bishop’s uncharacteristic sternness and watched Weaver march into the back regions of the barn.
