Night Games (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  Maxine’s voice came through the closed kitchen door. “It’s for you, Mom. It’s David, from Los Angeles.”

  “I’m coming.” As she rose to her feet, she realized that, since yesterday, this was the first time, calling her to the phone, that Maxine had spoken above a dull, dead monotone. The probable cause of Maxine’s animation was doubtless the affection she’d always felt for David. Right from the start, they’d gotten along: two children, playing at the game of life.

  Watching Maxine take the steaming coffeepot into the breakfast room, she took the phone from the counter. “Hello, David.” As she spoke, she realized that she was leaning heavily against the counter, as if she were suddenly too tired, too drained, to stand unsupported. In that instant, she visualized his face: improbably handsome, with soft, vulnerable brown eyes and a generously shaped mouth that could be so expressive, so sensual, sometimes. His thick, wiry, straw-colored hair would be falling low over his forehead. His whole manner would be stricken as, yes, he would be getting deep into the role, playing the sensitive, caring ex-husband—her second husband, in some ways her best husband.

  “My God, Katherine. I just read about it in the Times. It—it’s terrible. Unbelievable.”

  “I know. Thanks for calling, David.”

  “Are you all right? Is Maxine all right?”

  “We’re all right. Mother’s here.”

  “She is?” It was a transparently surprised question. Despite his actorish mannerisms, David had never been able to conceal his true feelings. And, no, he’d never much liked her mother, never really trusted her.

  “She got in last night.”

  “Well, then, you’re all right. I mean, I was going to say that, if you wanted me to, I could come up. I was thinking that with Richard living in Europe, maybe you’d need—you and Maxine—maybe you’d need someone with you. But if your mother’s there, then—” He let it go bleakly unfinished.

  Suddenly, overwhelmingly, she was remembering David and Maxine together, laughing, playing, letting their imaginations run wild. Maxine had been five years old when they were married. And eight years old when they were divorced. Saying goodbye to Maxine, holding her in his arms with her head buried in the hollow of his shoulder, David had cried. Just as her own father had cried, standing close beside her in the ice cream parlor so long ago.

  She realized that her eyes were filling. Her throat was closing. She covered the receiver, closed her eyes, jammed her fist against her mouth, to choke off sudden sobs.

  “Katherine? Are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes, blinked, took her fist from her mouth. Finally she managed to say, “I’ve made a mistake, David. And I—I need help. I—I’ve got to have help.”

  “I can be there in two or three hours. It’s only forty-five minutes, you know, from here—from Los Angeles. And there’s a flight every half-hour.”

  “I know,” she answered. “I know it’s only forty-five minutes. I’ll meet you. Call me, and I’ll meet you, David.”

  Four

  ABOUT TO LIFT THE telephone from its cradle, Wade hesitated. She’d told him to call today, sometime today. He was expected to repeat a few platitudes, offer conventional condolences, volunteer to help. Twice, once this morning and once at noon, he’d been about to call. But each time he’d drawn back. He was aware of the reason for his hesitation. He was, quite simply, afraid.

  She’d once told him, lying in bed, that Haney was unaware of his identity. To James Haney, Wade was his wife’s anonymous lover, nothing more. As she’d said it, he’d heard the casual contempt in her voice.

  He’d always known that she used him. From the first, he’d known it She was still using him. God, how she was using him.

  They’d met at a fund-raiser for Howard Browne, running for the Board of Supervisors. She’d been holding a small paper plate filled with hors d’oeuvres in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other hand while she talked to a squat gray-haired man who looked like a Mafia boss. She’d been wearing a black satin party dress that clung to her like—

  The door buzzer suddenly sounded: one long, nerve-jangling tone that carried through the whole apartment. He turned away from the telephone and strode across the living room to the small entryway. Before he opened the door, reflexively, he checked himself in the mirror, finger-combing his hair and tugging at the collar of his safari-style khaki shirt.

  It was the detective. Hastings. Alone. The detective was dressed as he’d been dressed yesterday, in a wrinkled corduroy jacket and sports shirt. And, yes, the loafers were the same, too, not quite polished.

  “Hi, Lieutenant.” He stepped back, smiled, gestured. “Come in.”

  “Thanks.” With his smooth, easy stride, Hastings walked past him, into the living room. The detective moved with a big-shouldered cop’s confidence that was touched with contempt, as if he’d spent too much time among the losers of the world, intimidating them, defeating them.

  Without being invited, Hastings took the same chair he’d taken yesterday—by invitation, then. Crossing one leg over the other, the detective waited for Wade to sit facing him before he said, “I’m glad I caught you. There’s a couple of things I have to double-check. You can help me.” The detective’s manner was noncommittal, revealing nothing. His eyes were expressionless, neither friendly nor hostile. His voice was dead level.

  “Sure—” He decided to smile, then thought better of it. Was the result a small, sick, unconvincing twisting of his mouth, an uneasy squinting of the eyes?

  “Sure—” he repeated, louder now. “Anything I can do.”

  “It’s about Friday night. We’ve been trying to nail everything down, decide where everyone was, at any particular time. Crosschecking, in other words.” The detective paused, looking at him expectantly. “Do you see?”

  “You mean ask several people, then compare notes. Is that it?”

  Promptly, Hastings nodded. “That’s it exactly.” A brief silence followed. Then, in the same noncommittal voice: “I talked to John Kelley. Your downstairs neighbor.”

  He decided to smile. Then he decided to nod.

  “Have you talked to Mr. Kelley in the past couple of days?” Hastings asked.

  “I don’t know whether you’d say I talked to him. We said a few words to each other this morning. He was walking his dog and I was getting some milk and the Sunday paper.”

  “Well,” Hastings said, heavily measuring the one word. “Inspector Canelli talked to him, yesterday. I thought Mr. Kelley might’ve said something to you about it.” He let a brief silence lengthen, then said, “And I talked to him myself, just now. Just before I came up here.”

  This was the moment he’d known would come: this silent, shattering moment, sitting in his own living room, knowing with absolute certainty that, in a matter of minutes, his whole life could unravel.

  Still without permitting his face to reveal any expression, as implacable as a doomsday prophet, the detective was drawing the noose slowly, inexorably tighter:

  “You said that Mrs. Haney left here at twelve-thirty Friday night. Is that right?”

  “I said ab—” His throat closed. “I said about twelve-thirty.”

  Now the detective was nodding. “About. Yes. That’s what Mrs. Haney said. She thinks she got home about one o’clock. Which would agree with what you say. Except—” Another long, ominous, cold-eyed silence passed. “Except that the more we talk to her, the less sure she seems to become.” The next silence was shorter, sharper. Then: “Is that where you stand, Mr. Wade? Are you less sure? Or more sure?”

  “Well, I—I’m not going to swear that she left exactly at twelve-thirty, if that’s what you mean.” As he spoke, he tried to make his voice sound irritable, tried to summon an expression of perplexity, of mild annoyance.

  “You’re not sure, then. Not completely sure.”

  “Well, as I said, it depends on what you mean by—”

  “Mr. Kelley is sure.” The detective spoke softly. Cat-and-mouse softly.r />
  “Well—” He waved his hand—inanely, he felt. “Well, good for Mr. Kelley. Wh—what’s he say? About the time, I mean.”

  “He says Mrs. Haney didn’t leave here until two o’clock.”

  “He probably saw another silver Mercedes 450, and thought it was Katherine’s. I don’t think he even—”

  “No. He saw her, too. Not just the car. He’s positive he—”

  “But he doesn’t even know her. He’s never met her. So how the hell can he say that—”

  “I figure Mr. Kelley for one of those mousey, middle-aged men who never married, and who’s never had any luck with women,” Hastings was saying, “Maybe he’s a little kinky. I wouldn’t be surprised. But, anyhow, I think Mr. Kelley has spent a lot of time watching Mrs. Haney. I think he could pick her out of a crowd. And I also think that—”

  “So what’re you saying? Are you saying I’m lying? Is that it? Is that what you think?”

  Slowly, almost diffidently, the big, soft-spoken detective was nodding. “Yes, Mr. Wade. That’s what I think.”

  “But it—it’s our word against his. You can’t—”

  “No. We’ve got other evidence. Electronic evidence And that evidence corroborates Mr. Kelley’s story. Not yours. And not Mrs. Haney’s either.”

  “Electronic evidence? I don’t—”

  “Her burglar-alarm system, Mr. Wade. It’s very sophisticated. And it squares with what Mr. Kelley says. It also contradicts what you said—you, and Mrs. Haney.”

  Without realizing that it had happened, his eyes had fallen before the lieutenant’s cold, ominous stare. He could feel himself losing control of his facial muscles, losing control of his hand movements …

  … losing control of the center of himself, that secret knot of shifting uncertainty that had always betrayed him to himself, since earliest memory.

  “I—I think I should—” With great difficulty, he swallowed. “Isn’t there—don’t you have to tell me that I have a right to a lawyer?”

  “Only if I think you’ve committed a crime,” Hastings answered. “And that’s not what I think. At least—” A pause. “At least, not yet.”

  He was trying to smile, trying to make a joke: “Well, that’s good news.”

  “What time did she leave here Friday night, Mr. Wade?”

  “Well, it—” The smile was failing him. He was a salesman, but he couldn’t smile. Therefore, he couldn’t save himself. “I guess it was about two o’clock.”

  “Like Mr. Kelley said.”

  He swallowed. “Yes. I—I guess so.”

  “Why did you say twelve-thirty, when I talked to you yesterday?”

  “Because Katherine—Mrs. Haney—asked me to say that.”

  “When did she ask you?”

  “Yesterday morning. Saturday morning. She called early, a little before eight. She told me what happened, and said that she wanted me to say she left here about twelve-thirty.”

  “Did she say why she wanted you to say that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No. Not really. I mean, she was upset, obviously. I wasn’t about to cross-examine her.”

  “Have you talked to her since then?”

  He glanced once at the policeman’s impassive face, then looked quickly away. “She called last night. About ten o’clock.”

  “Why’d she call?”

  “Well, she—ah—wanted to know whether I’d talked to you, whether you’d questioned me.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her that we talked. Naturally.”

  “You said that you told me she left here at twelve-thirty.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how’d she react?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Was she pleased, when you told her what you’d said?”

  “Well, I don’t know whether ‘pleased’ is the right word. But, yes, that’s what she wanted me to say.”

  “Do you have any idea why she wanted you to lie to us, Mr. Wade?”

  He shook his head. “No. None. She just told me what she wanted me to say. And I said it.”

  “You make it sound like you didn’t have a choice.”

  “Well, I—” He shrugged; “I suppose you could say that.”

  Hastings hesitated a moment, obviously considering with some care what he intended to say next. Then: “If I remember correctly, your guests left here a little after eleven o’clock. Is that right?”

  “Right.”

  “And then what happened? What did you and Mrs. Haney do then?”

  “Well, we—” He licked his lips, shrugged, finally frowned. “We—ah—made love.”

  “So you were in bed together from, say, eleven-thirty until two o’clock. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.” Formally, he felt, he was nodding. Was this what it would be like on the witness stand, finding formal phrases to describe his sex life?

  “You didn’t go out during that time. Either of you.”

  “No.”

  “At that time of night, how long would it take you to drive from here to Mrs. Haney’s house, would you say?”

  “Oh—fifteen minutes, maybe. Or twenty.”

  “And you’re sure neither of you left here between eleven o’clock and two o’clock?” As he asked the question, Hastings raised a cautionary hand. “Before you answer the question, I’d like to warn you, Mr. Wade.”

  “Warn me?”

  The detective was nodding. “You’ve already lied to me, yesterday. Technically, that’s obstruction of justice, and in a capital case. That can get pretty serious, believe me. Now, I’m not going to throw the book at you for that one. But I want to warn you, don’t do it again. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you understand the trouble you could be in, if you lie to me again?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I understand.”

  “All right. Now—” Hastings waved—invitingly, almost formally. “Now answer the question, please.”

  “The answer is, neither of us left here that night. Katherine was here from a little after seven until two o’clock.”

  The detective sat silently for a moment, implacably staring. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he suddenly rose to his feet, nodded, and walked to the door. At the door he turned back to face the other man. “That’s all I’ll need for now.” From his jacket pocket Hastings took a business card, which he put on the windowsill. “If you want to call me, if you’ve got anything more to tell me—” He pointed to the card. “That’s my direct line. I’ll probably be getting back to you in a day or two. Me, or someone else. So don’t leave town. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Five

  TED PARKER DOWNSHIFTED TO third gear, glanced in the mirror, swung the Kawasaki sharply to the right. Downshifting to second, he slowed, swung the bike into a sharp left turn. Gravel rattled inside the fenders. The front wheel broke away, steadied, came back on track. Beyond the second curve, the narrow, tree-lined dirt road straightened. He upshifted, opened the throttle, felt the bike come alive between his legs. The engine sang, the wheels were tracking true, all of it coming together at his center, lifting him free, sending him soaring.

  Until, around the last curve, a barrier blocked his way. He downshifted, braked, moved his body against the breakaway pull of the slewing wheels. With only a few feet remaining, he turned sharply left, slid the tires on the gravel, came to a stop with his right leg less than a foot from the heavy timber barrier. He dismounted, lowered the kickstand, turned off the gas, switched off the ignition, locked the front wheel.

  God, how it could get to him: the surge of power beneath him, the thrill of control, riding the ragged edge.

  He put his helmet on the seat, bowed his back, stretched his arms high overhead, fists tightly clenched. He wore blue jeans, low-cut black leather riding boots, a black leather jacket. He was tall and teen-age slend
er. His complexion was as pale as an invalid’s. Against the pallor of the skin, his eyes were unnaturally dark, his lips unnaturally vivid. His brown hair was short, erratically cut. His eyebrows were thick, almost meeting across the bridge of his nose. His face was expressionless. His eyes were round, utterly empty.

  Beyond the barricade, a rocky slope fell sharply down to the waters of San Francisco Bay. Facing the bay, he sat on the barricade. The curve of the Golden Gate Bridge was below him, connecting San Francisco with the blue-green hills of Marin County.

  He’d first come here a month ago, the day after he’d been arrested for beating Ed Fisher senseless.

  No. Not arrested. Taken to the station house. They’d called his parents, tried to scare him.

  But during the time he’d been at the station house, Ed had been in Emergency. Ed had been out of school for three days. And his face was still scarred. Badly scarred.

  He’d waited for Ed in the parking lot beside Swanson’s ice cream parlor, where Ed worked. He’d borrowed his father’s car, so he could watch Swanson’s without being recognized. That night, Ed had closed Swanson’s, so he hadn’t come out to his car until after eleven o’clock. The parking lot had been empty.

  He’d waited in the shadow of shrubbery until Ed was unlocking his car, the ten-year-old Toyota Ed bought the day he turned sixteen. He’d stepped out of the shadows, called Ed by name. Instantly, he’d seen the fear as Ed had whirled to face him. Because, instantly, Ed had known why he was there, had known what was coming.

  Without a word he’d stepped in close, drove his fist into Ed’s solar plexus. Ed had tried to grab him, hang on. But he’d stepped back, braced himself, went to work on the face. In moments, it was over. With Ed kneeling on the pavement, crying, screaming, begging, pressing his hands to his bleeding face, Ted had balanced himself carefully, then brought his knee up. He’d never forget it, the feel of the knee, crashing into Ed’s face. If it had been a baseball bat, his knee couldn’t have done more damage.