“Yes? Who’s there?”
“Dave Brandstetter. Insurance investigator. Looking into the death of Vaughn Thomas. Like to ask you a few questions, if I may?”
Pause. “Go to your left. Take the walk to the back. You’ll be met there.”
Two males in skivvy shirts and fatigue pants waited outside the door of an add-on room at the rear of the house. Its lighted windows showed Dave office equipment. The guards didn’t give him time to stare. They turned him. Roughly. One had a coarse five-day growth of black beard. Twigs and leaves were stuck in his long hair. The other was high school age, clean-shaven, even his scalp. It gleamed. His pretty arms were tattooed and he smelled of Lifebuoy soap. The older one just smelled. “Hands on top of the car.” It was a nondescript gray compact, possibly a rental. He did as he was told. Hands slapped his thighs. “Spread ’em.” The unwashed one, crouching, ran hands up and down Dave’s legs. The skinhead patted his torso. “Jesus, will you look at this.” He yanked Dave around to face him. “What did you think you were doing, bringing a gun in here?”
“I didn’t want to be different,” Dave said.
“Mr. Hetzel.” The tattooed boy banged on the door, which was painted with a double lightning bolt. The door opened. A fortyish man looked at Dave through rimless glasses from a bland, oval face. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, tie, the trousers of a gray business suit. “He come armed, sir,” the skinhead said.
“Yes,” Hetzel said, and held out a hand. “I’ll take it, sergeant, thank you.” He turned the Sig Sauer over in his hand, light glowing on its bronze finish. “A fine piece, Brandstetter. Swiss Army regulation.” He looked at the skinhead again, and at the bearded one. “That’s all, men,” he said, “dismissed.” The skinhead threw him a salute and a “Sir!” and clicked his heels before leaving. The smelly one just slouched off into the dark, scratching an armpit.
Unsmiling, Hetzel said to Dave, “Come in, Brandstetter. I want to talk to you.” He walked away from the door. Dave stepped inside and closed the door. A spring lock clicked. Hetzel threaded his way between file cabinets, typewriters, computers, printers, copying machines, to a desk, where he opened a drawer and dropped the Sig Sauer into it. The room was piled with boxes of office supplies. Worktables were heaped with printed form letters and window envelopes. The place looked like any office devoted to a cause, except for the guns and the Nazi flag beside the Stars and Stripes back of Hetzel’s chair. “Sit down. You’re older than I thought.”
“I’ve still got my teeth.” Dave put himself on a metal folding chair. “Anyway, why the interest in my age? Who am I to you?”
“The traitor who put Colonel Lothrop Zorn, a true patriot and brave marine, in prison. Disgraced him and destroyed an operation built to defend this country against enemies within and without.” Hetzel spoke as if by rote. The phrases probably weren’t always arranged in this order. But he’d used them a lot. No wonder he hadn’t been a winner on television. “The President of the United States had offered a reward to anyone who could capture and deliver for trial, leading to conviction, any terrorist or terrorists who—”
“I remember the case,” Dave said. “But you’re wrong. I didn’t destroy Zorn. Duke Summers did.”
“You were behind it,” Hetzel said.
“Don’t you respect Summers?” Summers was, on a higher and far more secret level, as powerful in U.S. intelligence as half a dozen CIA directors, and had been for decades. No one of Hetzel’s political leanings would dream of faulting Duke Summers. Not without knowing what Dave had learned about Summers when they were both twenty-two years old, serving with army intelligence in snowy, shell-shattered Berlin just after World War II. Dave had risked his neck to save Summers’s career then. But only the two of them would ever know that. Dave didn’t admire that career. But that was another story. He smiled. “Of course you do. Why, Gorbachev would be running this country from Omaha today if it wasn’t for Duke Summers.”
“I don’t like you,” Hetzel said in his flat voice. “And I don’t put up with people I don’t like. I have a mission—to save this country from the Jews and the niggers and the mongrel hordes of South America and Asia, and give it back to the white people. And I don’t get a lot of help with that. Whole United States feels the way I do, but they’ve been brainwashed by the liberal network TV traitors to where they’re afraid to speak out plainly. I have to reach those people, and I will, I will. But it takes a lot of time and energy, most of it mine. So tell me what you’re doing here, and let’s get it over with.”
“Vaughn Thomas came down here last spring and enrolled in your guerrilla warfare training program,” Dave said. “I don’t know what qualifications you expect of your candidates, but I’m told his was a donation of five thousand dollars to your cause. He spent a few months here—three, was it?—and then one night he decamped. Very suddenly. And you were upset about it. Mad as hell, in fact.”
Now Hetzel smiled. It wasn’t meant for cheerful. It was meant to chill the blood. “I don’t get mad, Brandstetter. I get even.”
Dave stared. “You know what you’re saying?”
“I know better than that,” Hetzel said easily. “I know no one is listening. There’s only the two of us here, and anything you tell anyone about this meeting of ours will only be your word against mine. I know that Vaughn Thomas was killed by a rifle bullet up in Los Angeles. I saw it on the Monday morning news on television.”
“Maybe—but you knew about it before that, right?”
“I never said so,” Hetzel said.
“But you were up in L.A. on Sunday?”
“I was not. I was in Columbia, South Carolina, at a white-power conference. I was the keynote speaker.”
“You could have sent somebody to L.A. to do the job.” Dave tilted his head toward the door. “The one with the insect life in his hair looks as if he’d enjoy it.”
“To what point? Why would I want Vaughn Thomas dead? I loved the boy. I felt he had real potential. Uncanny how we thought alike. He could have been my son.”
“He was Steven Thomas’s son,” Dave said. “Thomas is old and has a bad heart. And Vaughn told you that when he died, he, Vaughn, would inherit millions, and he was going to turn all of it over to you for your work. I’ve seen it before—losing out on millions can make a man angry enough to kill.”
“Not this man. It was only a matter of waiting. Vaughn would have come back. He was happy here, said so with tears in his eyes. He’d found his true home.” Hetzel’s face darkened. “He only left because of that girl. She’s the one who sealed his fate.”
“You saying she shot him?” Dave said.
“I didn’t mean that,” Hetzel said, “but if he’d stayed here in Winter Creek, it wouldn’t have happened.” His eyes behind their shiny lenses narrowed. He pointed a finger. “Dallas Engstrom started it, beating her, sending her into Vaughn’s arms. A married woman with a child.”
“Little Mike,” Dave said. “He told me tonight that Vaughn was afraid of you. He sure as hell was afraid of something. Several people noticed that. Jumped every time the phone rang at his office. He was in hiding. Gave a false address on his job application. Didn’t even put a telephone in at his apartment. Why?”
“Afraid of me? Hiding from me?” Hetzel snorted a laugh. “Ridiculous. Little children make things up, you know that.”
“Grownups make things up too, Hetzel.”
“Use your common sense,” Hetzel said. “Did Vaughn leave here alone? Fleeing in fear? He did not. He left with Jemmie Engstrom. She was pretty and helpless and came running to him to save her. Vaughn was only a boy. He had no defenses against a woman like that.”
“About Engstrom—he claims you dismissed him a few years back for a barroom brawl. Is that true?”
“Not for a barroom brawl, no. He was uncontrollable, and he put ARAMMO in danger. Some of the trainees in his platoon got hurt—one of them nearly died. Their families threatened to sue. We had to settle out of court to keep the st
ory quiet. It cost a lot of money—and we can’t afford that.” Hetzel sighed. “He was a fine instructor. He knew how tough it was out there, and he was tough on his boys, and they came out real fighting men. He’d learned from experience. In Vietnam, that war we ran away from, betraying all those boys who’d given the last full—”
“I thought you didn’t want to waste time,” Dave said.
Hetzel didn’t hear. His face had grown red. “The Jew communist scum here at home, the very people I want to stop—marching in the street, burning the flag, making cowards out of Congress—betrayed our brave fighting—”
“You were telling me about Dallas Engstrom,” Dave said.
“What?” Hetzel blinked, drew breath, and his blood pressure dropped a little. “Engstrom killed Vaughn. Of course he did. For stealing his wife. Then he killed her. Just this afternoon. Here in Winter Creek. At Barney Craig’s house. Naturally that idiot Rose arrested Barney.”
“Craig is your chief lieutenant,” Dave said. “Why haven’t you bailed him out?”
“Oh, no.” Hetzel held up his hands. “A murder scandal could destroy us. The media will try to connect it to the Movement. It’s Barney’s business, private, personal, nothing to do with us. I can’t touch it. My supporters are Christians, old-fashioned, respectable people, not educated, not sophisticated, but they know right from wrong—and they don’t want the Movement made to look sordid and squalid. That’s not the America I’m fighting to bring back.”
“The America where you burn crosses on a neighbor’s lawn because he’s black?” Dave said. “Kill his dog? Drive his children out of school?”
Hetzel thrust out his jaw. “Blacks have no business in Winter Creek. This is a white community. What did Alexander want to move in here for? To make trouble, that’s all.”
“I had it backwards,” Dave said. “I thought you were the one who made the trouble.”
“I had nothing to do with it. I tell you, the people down here have old-fashioned values—and the races don’t mix, Brandstetter. I don’t care if he calls himself a professor, I don’t care if he earns two hundred thousand dollars a year, he’s a nigger. And when niggers try to move in on white people, that’s the time to draw the line.”
“Or set a fire?” Dave said.
Hetzel lost color. For a few seconds his mouth moved without words coming out of it. Then his color returned, and he leaned across the desk, jabbing with that finger. “You listen to me. I had nothing to do with that fire. ARAMMO had nothing to do with it.”
“You didn’t want that housing complex built,” Dave said. “You fought it every inch of the way, talks on television, mailers, petitions, a delegation to Sacramento.”
“All legitimate means,” Hetzel said. “Constitutional. But people get stirred up over a thing like that. Feelings run deep. But”—he spread his hands—“I can’t be held responsible for the violent actions of every deranged nut running loose in Fortuna County.”
“You did stir them up, though, right? You admit that?”
“I wanted to stir sane people up,” Hetzel said. “Bring them to their senses.”
“And when you failed at that, when legitimate measures didn’t work, you resorted to illegitimate ones, desperate ones.”
“No. Absolutely not. Ask the FBI.” Hetzel’s arm swung at the row of cabinets. “They got a court order, and went through those files with a fine-tooth comb. Questioned me for hours. Interviewed everybody here. Took ’em days. Four agents. Nothing. They didn’t turn up one shred of evidence pointing to me.”
“I’m sure they didn’t,” Dave said.
“You’re sneering,” Hetzel said. “Well, let me tell you something nobody else knows. They didn’t settle for a legitimate search. They broke in here later and searched again. Made it look like some left-wing crowd did it or something. Careless, threw stuff around. But it was them, all right, wasn’t it? Trying to catch me off guard, in case I’d hidden something from them before.”
“Shocking,” Dave said. “It still doesn’t mean you didn’t send your Bathless Wonder out there”—he jerked his head at the office door—“off over the hills with a match and a can of gasoline that night, does it? That wouldn’t require any paperwork.”
Hetzel jumped to his feet. “Get out of here.”
“When you give me back my gun,” Dave said.
Hetzel gave it to him in sections, gun, ammunition clip, bullets, grimly walked him to the door, worked the locks, sent him out into the night alone. Dave went along the lighted cement strip between house and driveway, and when he reached the front corner of the house, heard Hetzel close the office door. Dave started across the lawn, aiming for the dark Jaguar at the edge of the road. The air was heavy with the smell of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus pods crunched under his shoes. And under the shoes of others. He was not alone. Darkness hid them from sight, but they were walking with him.
His heart thudded. It was hard to breathe. Sweat trickled down his ribs. Not breaking stride, he loaded the clip, ignoring how his hands shook. He shoved the clip into the Sig Sauer and jacked a round into the chamber. He didn’t put the gun into its holster. It was still in his hand when he reached the dry weeds at the edge of the road, and three of the lads in brown skivvy shirts and fatigue pants stepped out of the darkness to surround him. Their shaven heads gleamed, their perfect adolescent teeth, in smiles that were not smiles. They weren’t armed. The only metal he saw was on their feet—steel-toed boots.
“Excuse me, please.” He stepped into the street, to go around to the driver’s side of the Jaguar. They closed in on him, bumping him with shoulders, elbows, hips. He turned and pointed the gun. There were only two of them. He didn’t have time to wonder about that. The arm of the third one closed around his throat from behind. In front, a foot swung up, metal met metal, and the Sig Sauer flew out of his hand. He stamped on the foot of the boy who held him. No good. The choke hold only tightened. He couldn’t breathe. His ears rang. His legs went weak. His eyesight dimmed. He was going to black out. A hand rummaged his keys from his jacket pocket, held them up, jingling.
“Let’s go,” a voice said.
“Yeah.” The car door opened. Dave was jerked around, his head pushed down. “Come on, old man. It’s time to die.”
From across the road, a voice shouted, “Peace officer! Break it up!” A gun blasted. Buckshot whistled overhead. The skinheads yelped. Dave was dropped. Light struck the skinheads, who wheeled in panic, stumbling into one another, and fled in their clumsy boots. Dave pushed to his feet. The light played over him. “You all right?”
Claude Rose came out of the darkness, holding the shotgun. He said, “I warned you not to come here alone. You didn’t take me serious.”
“I do now.” Dave brushed himself off. “Thanks for rescuing me.” He reached out a hand. “One more favor, please? Lend me that flashlight. I’ve lost my gun.”
10
EARLY MORNING SUNLIGHT STRETCHED a long shadow from the sprawling new house down the flank of a brown hill in a development four miles out of town. He parked on the road margin in front of a house still under construction, yard strewn with lumber scraps and torn paper cement bags. Scattered along the winding, new-laid tarmac streets out here were other houses like it, but the one with the mailbox on a wrought-iron post, the box lettered R. ALEXANDER, appeared to be the only completed house in the development. Ranch-style, low-roofed, with deep eaves, a flagstone path leading to a front door with diamond-shaped panes of pebbled amber glass. Except for a ragged double-trunked Spanish dagger that had probably been here a hundred years, the landscaping wasn’t in. Plastic pipe for a lawn sprinkler system lay at the edge of the lot. In the driveway, a new, dark-red Sterling four-door waited with dew on its roof.
In the morning stillness, Dave heard the door chimes ring someplace far off in the house. This was followed by voices, but he couldn’t make out the words. At last a black girl of high school age opened the door. She wore puffy stone-washed blue jeans and a man’s shirt an
d had twisted and tied her hair in complications he didn’t know a term for but which he judged were trendy.
“My name is Brandstetter.” He handed her his card. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Alexander, please? It’s about the death of Jemmie Engstrom yesterday?”
She eyed him uncertainly, blinked at the card, then gave him a little smile and said, “Wait here, please,” and closed the door. “Daddy?” he heard her call.
Dave turned and looked at the unfinished place across the street. How long had it been since anyone sawed a plank or drove a nail there? Some little while. The studs were weathering, turning gray, even beginning to warp in places. The door behind him opened again, and he turned.
The black man standing there wore jogging pants, a Rolex watch, and nothing else. His torso looked like a work of sculpture. How old was he? Maybe forty, but he looked younger, even with the mustache and trimmed beard. The most startling thing about his very good looks was his eyes—hazel, almost yellow. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m investigating the shooting death of Vaughn Thomas in Los Angeles last Sunday,” Dave said. “The woman he’d been living with, Jemmie Engstrom, was killed here in Winter Creek yesterday afternoon.”
Alexander nodded. “I heard about it. It’s sad and it’s shocking. But I didn’t know her, Mr.”—he glanced at the card he’d got from the girl—“Brandstetter. I didn’t know either of them. Nor the man who killed her—Craig? And I’m short on time. I have to drive my children to school.”
“Like Craig, Vaughn Thomas was connected to George Hetzel’s outfit,” Dave said. “You do know about Hetzel.”
Alexander’s expression had been one of amiable curiosity. It hardened. “Anyone of my color knows about the Ku Klux Klan. He was Grand Dragon of the Klavern here. He and his sheeted brethren called on me on my first night in this house.”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 10
