Find a Victim

by Ross Macdonald

  “Its as wild as life. If he was making it up, he’d think of something more credible. Besides, I saw the hole.”

  “He could have dug it himself. And he has reason to lie, if he’s the Summer girl’s grandfather.”

  “MacGowan didn’t even know the girl was in trouble when he told me about the gravediggers.”

  “He seems to have convinced you, at least.”

  “Question him yourself.”

  “I intend to. In the meantime, I want you to talk for the record.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  He flicked his intercom switch and asked for a court reporter. A genteel white-haired man lugged his stenotype into the room and set it up by the desk. While his racing fingers took my story down, Westmore roved the office.

  The sheriff played a purely conventional role in my account. If Westmore had been a different man, I might have spoken out. But Westmore was very smooth, and I distrusted his smoothness. He had more power than the sheriff, but I couldn’t be sure how he would use his power.

  Halfway through my recital, he was called out of the room. He came back bright-eyed and nervous with excitement. After the stenotypist left, he told me why:

  “I’ve been talking to the intelligence unit from Internal Revenue. I turned over Kerrigan’s books to them this morning. There hasn’t been time for a complete analysis, but they’re certain now that he was cheating the government.”

  “Income-tax evasion?”

  “Yes, going back several years. He made quite a lot of money out of his bar in the late forties, money that he didn’t report as income.”

  “Where did the money go?”

  He shrugged his narrow pin-striped shoulders. “Las Vegas, Tanforan, Caliente—much more exciting than paying income tax. The year after he bought the Golden Slipper, he started keeping two sets of books. Apparently he did it with Anne Meyer’s connivance. She was his secretary and bookkeeper at that time. The government has been trying for several months to get some concrete evidence against them. They tell me they were planning to call both Kerrigan and the Meyer woman before the grand jury.”

  “No wonder he tried to get out.”

  Westmore nodded solemnly. “Donald Kerrigan was at the end of his rope, financially and morally and every other way. Even his marriage was breaking up. I spoke just now to Kate Kerrigan on the telephone. He’s luckier than she is, in a sense. He’s out of it.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “Not if the government presses its case. She signed his joint tax returns, of course without knowing that he had falsified them. But they could probably take everything she has left.”

  I thought of Kate Kerrigan, still tangled in the consequences of a wrong choice made seven years ago. “Isn’t that pretty rough on her?”

  “It won’t happen if I can help it. Kate’s a much sinned-against woman, and she’s been a saint about it, an absolute saint.”

  I didn’t argue, though saint wasn’t quite the word. “I like her, too.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say so. She asked after you, by the way. She wants to see you when you’re finished here.”

  “Is she at home?”

  “At home, yes. One thing I didn’t tell her, and I wouldn’t want it passed on to her, or anyone else.” He looked at me a little dubiously.

  “It’ll stop with me.”

  “Well, it ties in with your idea that the Meyer woman is central to this case. According to Kerrigan’s canceled checks, he’s been paying her a thousand dollars a month for the past year.”

  “That’s a big salary for a motel manager.”

  “More than he ever drew from the business himself.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “It seems to be the logical hypothesis. Hush-money of some sort, probably connected with his income-tax shenanigans. Whatever it was, it gave him a powerful motive for murdering her. Does that fit in with your ideas?”

  “I’ll go along with it, at least for the present.”

  Westmore moved to the window and stood there for a while with his back to me. When he turned, his spectacles glared in the slanting light.

  “Let’s assume that Kerrigan killed Anne Meyer on Monday, and disposed of her body somehow. He knew that it would be found sooner or later, and he’d be the obvious suspect. No doubt he also knew that the Revenue Bureau was getting ready to descend on his fat neck. So he decided to get out, with as much money as he could scrape together.”

  “And the Summer girl.”

  “The girl, of course. She’s the catalytic agent in the reaction. She brought her two men together, Bozey and Kerrigan, and they worked out a plan to highjack a load of liquor. Bozey had twenty thousand dollars that he couldn’t spend. Kerrigan had the connections that made it possible for him to order the load and set it up for Bozey. He even arranged a temporary drop at the airbase. For these various services Bozey paid him in stolen money.”

  “Which Kerrigan wouldn’t have been able to spend either.”

  “Obviously Kerrigan didn’t know that. They conned him. Bozey was using the girl as sucker-bait.” The underworld jargon sounded queer in Westmore’s Ivy League accent.

  “Maybe,” I said, “but she made it real for herself. She was in love with Kerrigan.”

  His eyebrows rose. “How do you know that?”

  “From the way she talked. Also, I saw them together.”

  “Isn’t that rather subjective evidence?”

  “You can’t ignore it, though. People are human. That includes the girls in Corona, and the girls who are on their way there.”

  “We won’t argue.” His face had stiffened into an official mask. He was a bureaucrat, no matter how reluctant. “She’s accessory to murder in any case. We know that Bozey shot Aquista.”

  “Do we know it for certain?”

  “I’m convinced he shot both Aquista and Kerrigan. The bullets that killed them came from the same gun. Look at Bozey’s record. It’s pure chance that he hadn’t killed before. He was ready to kill for that load of whisky. It was better than money to him, better than the kind of money he had. There are still states in this Union where good bootleg liquor is a valuable commodity.”

  “New Mexico is one. The reservation Indians pay high for it.”

  “I’m not forgetting it. We’re watching all the highways out of the state. When he tries to drive that truck across the border, we’ll take him. And we’ll have our case wrapped up.”

  “In tissue paper.”

  “What about tissue paper?” he snapped.

  “It doesn’t hold water. You said Aquista and Kerrigan were shot with the same gun.”

  “That’s correct. Danelaw did a good job with the bullets. The Kerrigan slug was smashed by the skullbone, but there’s enough of it left for positive identification. It came from the same barrel as the slug in Aquista’s chest.”

  “What kind of a barrel?”

  “A .38-caliber revolver. Danelaw thinks it was probably an old police positive.”

  “If your ballistics evidence is sound, it lets Bozey out. He didn’t shoot Kerrigan.”

  “I say he did.”

  “Wait a minute. Consider what that means. It means he drove the truck down the highway from the airbase to the motor court, at a time when every cop in the county was looking for him. Parked his hot rig in front of the motor court and went inside and shot his partner in the crime. What motive could he have to justify the risk?”

  Westmore leaned forward across the desk, resting his weight on spread fingers, in prosecutor’s position. “Kerrigan’s death erased a witness against him, a witness who would be dangerous as soon as he found out that his payoff money was useless. And Kerrigan was running away with his girl.”

  “It doesn’t stand up,” I said. “Bozey had what he wanted, and he was on his way with it. He wouldn’t double back for the simple satisfaction of blowing Kerrigan’s head off. And if he didn’t do one murder, he didn’t do the other—provided Danelaw knows what he’s t
alking about.”

  “I have complete confidence in Danelaw. And I say Bozey did both murders. Or else he killed Aquista, then lent his gun to the girl to use on Kerrigan.”

  “That’s very unlikely.”

  “On the contrary. Those two suppositions are the only possible ones that fit the facts. There’s a certain law of economy in the interpretation of evidence.”

  “It’s false economy if you don’t cover all the facts.”

  He gave me a narrow cross-questioner’s stare. “Is there more evidence that you’re cognizant of and I’m not?”

  I returned his stare, as blandly as I knew how. He wasn’t the kind you could get to know in an hour, or a year. I doubted that a man as jumpily brilliant as Westmore would have his well-manicured fingers in a courthouse pie. But politics made stranger bedfellows than sex.

  I got up and went to the window. Outside on the lawn a gang of trusties in jail dungarees were clipping the courthouse fire-thorn. I had no desire to join them. Somewhere out of sight, a power mower droned like an insect caught in the slow amber of the afternoon.

  “I gather that you have,” he said at my shoulder.

  “Nothing concrete.”

  “Let’s have it. I don’t have time to waste.”

  “Meyer told me a tale about a gun. I don’t know that I believe it. The significant thing is that he brought it up himself in the first place. He may have been trying to account for the fact that it’s missing.”

  “What sort of a gun?”

  “A .38 revolver, police positive. He claims that he lent it to his daughter Anne some time last fall. That she asked him for a weapon to protect herself against Tony Aquista.”

  “Against Aquista?”

  “That’s Meyer’s story. He may be lying.”

  “I don’t understand—I thought you were working for Meyer.”

  “Not any more. Something came up between us that happened ten years ago. Was that before your time?”

  “Hardly. I’ve been in practice here for nearly fifteen years.”

  “You probably remember the case, then. Meyer was hauled into court for mistreating his younger daughter.”

  “I remember,” he said grimly. “The case never came to trial, however. The girl was too frightened to testify. And I suppose Meyer did some wirepulling. The best Judge Craig could do was find his home an unfit place for minors, and take the child out of his hands.”

  “What’s Meyer’s reputation, apart from that?”

  “I believe he was a rough customer in his younger days. And I’ve heard he made his original capital driving for Mexican rumrunners in the twenties. That was before my time.”

  “The sheriff isn’t much of a picker when it comes to inlaws.”

  “You don’t judge a man by his father-in-law,” Westmore said severely. “Church knew all about the old man when he married Hilda. His main idea was to get both of the girls out of Meyer’s reach. He told me that himself one night, over a couple of highballs.”

  “There’s money in the family, isn’t there?”

  His face hardened. “If you’re fishing for what I think you are, you can reel in your line. Money wouldn’t interest the sheriff. He works a sixteen-hour day for less money than I get. Church simply fell in love with Meyer’s daughter and married her. He does what he thinks is right, without regard for consequences.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said, stroking the bandaged side of my face. “Is that true of his identification man, Danelaw?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “Can you trust Danelaw not to twist facts, no matter where they lead?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even if they lead into his own department?”

  “You can’t mean Brandon Church.”

  I was on very thin ice, and I backed away a little. “That’s your inference.”

  Westmore’s eyes glinted like nailheads, and he smiled frostily. “Danelaw wants to be sheriff more than anything else in the world.”

  “Then send him over to Meyer’s house. The old man has some kind of a shooting-gallery rigged up in his basement. Danelaw may find some more of those .38 slugs that he’s been working with. And then again he may not.”

  CHAPTER 22: Kate Kerrigan was waiting in my car.

  “I was afraid I’d miss you,” she said when I opened the door. “I took a taxi down. Mr. MacGowan phoned from the powerhouse.”

  “For me?”

  “Yes, he’s on his way to my house to see you. He wasn’t very specific, but I think it’s something about his granddaughter. He asked me not to mention his call to anyone but you.”

  I got in and started the car. High school had let out. A few blocks from the courthouse, an advance guard of hotrods and jalopies stormed the streets, followed by an irregular army of boys in jeans and pretty, barelegged girls. Some of the girls were about the same age as Jo. I wondered what set her apart from them, what made the difference.

  Kate changed the direction of my thoughts. “To think,” she said, “that I was one of those children, less than ten years ago. The luckiest one. Father was still alive then, and I was Homecoming queen, and the captain of the football team took me to the prom. I thought that everything was going to be wonderful, all the rest of my life. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Nobody ever does.”

  “They let me live in a dream world,” she said bitterly. “They let me believe that I was special, that nothing could ever touch me. You know who I thought I was? The Lady of Shalott, watching the world in a mirror. And then the mirror cracked. Or don’t you know the poem?”

  “I read it in high school, too.”

  We rode the rest of the way to her house in silence. There was no sign of MacGowan, and she asked me to come in and wait. Her living-room was chilly in spite of the daylong sun. Echoes of the quarrel I had overheard still twittered in the walls.

  She flung her black hat and gloves on a chair and motioned me into another. “It’s even worse than I’d thought. Did Sam Westmore tell you?”

  “A little.”

  “Don left me with less than nothing. Sam says I may be liable for several years of unpaid income taxes. Something I didn’t even know about.”

  “It won’t happen if Westmore has his way. He’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he?”

  “I’ve always believed so.”

  “But what if it does happen? What if they do take the rest of your property?”

  “I’ll be penniless.”

  “Is that such a terrible prospect?”

  “I hardly know. I haven’t begun to face it.”

  “Take a look at it now. What’s to be so afraid of? You’re young, and pretty, and smart.”

  Her ringless hand moved sideways in an impatient gesture. “I’m afraid I can’t respond to compliments. Not today. Thank you for the good intentions, though.”

  “I don’t see what you have to mourn for. He did you a favor by getting himself shot. Maybe he did you another favor by throwing your money away for you.”

  She looked at me as if she doubted my sanity. “What can you possibly mean by that?”

  “You’ll be getting married again—”

  “Never.”

  “You will, though. When you do, you’ll stand a better chance of finding an honest husband, not another Kerrigan. This state is crawling with easy-money boys, drones that swarm after money wherever it is. I’ve met a thousand of him.”

  “Are there so many?”

  “Walk a long block in Beverly Hills or Santa Barabara or Santa Monica and you’ll see two or three of them, driving their Jags and their Caddies.”

  “And do they all have—wives?”

  “They prey on women. As long as women own three fourths of the property in this country, there will be men trying to take it away from them, and succeeding. You belong to the biggest secret sorority in the United States: the well-heeled girls who married wrong ones and lived to regret it. It’s the ladies’ auxiliary of the alimo
ny fraternity.”

  She gave me a long dazed look. “You live in a terrible world, don’t you?”

  “The real world.”

  “How do you stand it?”

  “By not investing my feelings in gold bricks. How do you?”

  “I don’t. That should be obvious. I’m a delicately nurtured girl”—she ironized the phrase—“who waited too long to grow up. It’s hard to grow up—no wonder so few people succeed.” The deep worried cleft appeared between her brows, and she said in a different tone: “Don wasn’t as bad as you think. He honestly tried, part of the time at least. It wasn’t entirely his fault that he couldn’t handle money. I should have helped him. I could have, in all sorts of ways. I wasn’t a good wife to him. He needed more than I was able to give him.”

  “He needed more than anybody could give him.”

  “You’re full of hard sayings this afternoon.”

  “Sorry. I’ve met a lot of Kerrigans, as I said. They’re born with a vacuum where the heart should be. Or something happens to them when they’re kids. Anyway, there’s nothing in them but hunger, a hungry hole you can’t fill.”

  “Like a woman?”

  She blushed, and rose in confusion and went to the big window. After a while she said to me, or to the heedless city: “I couldn’t have done worse, could I? When I think of what my father was—a respected man in this valley. My grandfather founded Las Cruces College, on land he donated himself. And I betrayed them. It isn’t simply their money that I’ve squandered. I’ve squandered their reputations, everything they stood for, the whole past.” She turned and looked around the arctic beautiful room. “It hardly seems fair, it hardly seems possible, that I could destroy so much with a single mistake.”

  “It’s not destroyed, and neither are you. Phonies like Kerrigan can’t destroy real people and real things.”

  “Can’t they?”

  She turned her back on me again. With her bright hair loose on her neck, she might have been a slim young girl. It was hard to believe that she’d gone through seven years of a bad marriage and been widowed by a gun.