Dave scoffed. “When he tried to get elected to the State Assembly, the voters turned him down.”
“The ones who get elected just call themselves conservatives,” Rose said. “But Hetzel, he was right out front with his white-supremacy stuff. That’s why. The TV news scared them off, running them videos of Hetzel in his white sheet and hood, the cross-burning ceremony he led, them sound bites where he claims the holocaust is nothing but a Jewish lie—all them upstate anchor boys and girls wagging their finger, saying ‘shame.’ Ninety percent of the people down here think like Hetzel, hate like Hetzel, niggers, illegal aliens, Vietnamese, people with AIDS—you can take my word for it. Ignorant racist rednecks is what they are, but they didn’t like the big city folks saying so. The opinion polls showed Hetzel was a shoo-in, but when it come down to it, Winter Creek turned around and voted middle-of-the-road.”
“And you’re saying if you move against Hetzel—”
“This wouldn’t be a move,” Rose said, “it would be an earthquake. We’re not talking little stuff here, threats, slander, civil rights violations, carrying guns, concealing arms and ammunition. That housing fire was a major crime. Arrest Hetzel for it? Might as well set myself on fire.”
“He’s guilty,” Dave said.
Rose nodded. “No doubt in my mind about it. And that boy Vaughn could maybe stand a chance of proving it—but he’s dead. Hetzel seen to that, didn’t he?”
“And you’re going to let him get away with it?”
“What can I do—Barney knows the truth, but he’ll go to the gas chamber before he’ll betray Hetzel. And I don’t put a whole hell of a lot of faith in them papers of Alexander’s. It’s plain enough to me what they mean. But he’s black, and it’s about the murder of a black man, and even if he got the county attorney to go for it, he’s got an all-white, mean-minded, right-wing grand jury down here to get past, and who knows what kind of judge it would go to for trial? Look, Brandstetter, I don’t have long to go before I retire. I get on the wrong side of these lunatic-fringers, and I can lose everything, pension, medical insurance, bring disgrace on my wife and family.” He hunched forward, craning his long neck, peering at Dave under the hanging lantern. “You want to be responsible for that? What did I ever do to you?”
“Do you want me to be kicked to death by a squad of Hetzel’s skinheads?”
“It’s up to you.” Rose tucked in his napkin again, and picked up his fork. “You started it.” He filled his mouth, chewed, washed the food down with a long swallow of milk. “Call it off, Brandstetter. Go home and forget it.”
“I can’t do that.” Dave stood. “You won’t help?”
“I’d be a fool,” Rose said.
17
THE STREET LAMPS WORKED in Horace Thalberg’s abandoned development out in the hills. Spaced along curving streets to nowhere, they cast bright circles of light on the new if dusty paving and the ageless roadside chaparral. The unfinished houses—studs, roofs, chimneys, empty window and door frames—stood stranded on their chopped-off hilltop lots under a wide windswept sky strewn with stars—shelters that would never shelter anyone while there was any chance at all that they might have to shelter blacks.
Dave drove on past the dark Alexander house. He looked for cars on all the streets, saw none, saw no cars lurking, lights out, in shadowy coves or behind clumps of brush. He drove the wide, lonely circle again. Satisfied, he swung the Jaguar in at the Alexander driveway, raised the garage door with the signaling device Alexander had left with him, stowed the Jaguar inside. With a whine and a groan, the garage door closed itself. On his way here from Rose’s place, Dave had stopped at the drugstore and bought a small cassette recorder. He’d unpacked it in the car and fitted it with batteries and tape. He dropped it in his jacket pocket now, closed the car, entered the house from the garage.
At Dave’s prompting, Alexander had left no lights on and had drawn the curtains on all windows except those on the sliding glass doors of Andy’s room, facing the pool. He’d also left one of those doors open, and the padlock on the tall plank gate to the pool area unfastened. Dave paused in the hallway, gazed across Andy’s room for a moment, then went through the room and out and around the inky, star-twinkling pool, and unlatched the gate. It swung a little in the wind. Its hinges creaked. That would draw attention. Good.
He stood listening for a moment, heard only crickets, and from the distant creek that gave the town its name, the high-pitched chorus of frogs. He went back inside the house and made his way to Alexander’s office. He checked the curtains to be sure of their thickness and that they closed well. Then he sat down at the desk, switched on the lamp there, picked up the receiver, and punched buttons on the telephone.
No one answered at the Horseshoe Canyon place. He rang Channel Three, asked for Cecil, waited, and got Dot Yamada, one of the night news desk anchors. She knew Dave. Third-generation American, she was personable, bright, pretty as a peony, tough as a samurai. “He never came back from Burbank,” she said. “It got to be three in the afternoon, and we began putting out calls, but no one answered. He’s vanished, Dave. Curly Ravitch too.” That was Cecil’s cameraman. “And Billy Choy.” The sound engineer. “Cecil gave me the address of this McNeil he was going to interview, and we sent somebody to check it out. Nobody there. No sign of the van. Jesus left a message for you at the—what’s its name?—Winter Creek sheriff’s office.”
“I’ve been too busy to check in there,” Dave said.
“Dave, where do you think he went?”
“Beats me,” Dave said. “Did you notify the police?”
“You bet,” she said. “Donaldson did.” Donaldson was head of the Channel Three news department. “He’s not worried about Cecil and Curly and Billy. He’s worried about the van. It’s new. It’s outfitted with all the latest equipment, and it cost half a million dollars.”
“A man of feeling,” Dave said.
“The police put out an all-points bulletin,” Dot said. “What do you think—did Iranian spies steal it for the technology? Cecil said this was a sensational story. I’m holding a slot open on the eleven o’clock. But he’s going to miss the deadline if he doesn’t call in soon.”
“I’ll tell him when I see him,” Dave said.
Frowning, he hung up and rang LAPD. But Joey Samuels wasn’t there, neither was Jeff Leppard, and no one available knew anything but that the van was missing, along with one producer, one cameraman, one sound man. All units had been alerted. Big, showy truck. It shouldn’t be hard to spot. Probably parked by some back street Burbank tavern, the crew enjoying a few beers on company time. Dave doubted it.
He switched off the desk lamp, left the office for a bedroom he judged to be Alexander’s. He pulled the recorder from his pocket and set it on the nightstand, laid the gun beside it, and stretched out on the bed to wait in the dark. He waited a long time. The hum of the refrigerator reached him from the kitchen. After a while, it began to sound too loud, and he rose and went to the windows, ran the curtains back, slid open half the glass wall so he could hear the crickets and the frogs again, and the wind in the dry brush. He stood peering out at the sleeping night hills and straining his ears. His watch read ten of eleven. Surely it was time for him to be hearing the engine of an approaching car, jeep, truck, some sort of vehicle. What was Hetzel waiting for? He lay down again. Time dragged. His eyelids drooped. He rolled off the bed and tottered to the bathroom. In the dark he splashed his face and doused his hair with cold water, toweled roughly, went back into the bedroom, but didn’t lie down. He stood smoking a cigarette and gazing out at the night. After the cigarette, he paced to keep himself awake. Then to rest his legs, he allowed himself to sit on the bed, and before he knew it he’d nodded off.
He woke with a start and pawed out for the gun. The motion was sluggish, his fingers numb. He fumbled it, and it made a noise. No one spoke, but he heard the hiss of a sharply drawn breath. A floorboard creaked. Hetzel was here. His heart thumped. Damn. He’d depended on hearing the car arr
ive. And he hadn’t heard it, had he? Slowly, cautiously, he eased his weight off the bed. Hetzel mustn’t realize he was here—not until the man had those papers from Alexander’s files in his hands. He pressed the record key on the recorder, dropped it into his pocket, and moved to the door. The hallway was black and he didn’t even see the man. But the man saw him and poked his chest with a rifle barrel. Dave raised the Sig Sauer. A hand smacked his arm down. Fingers closed around the gun and wrenched it from him.
“Thank you,” a voice said. Not Hetzel’s voice.
Dave squinted against the dark. “O’Neil?”
“You won’t be needing this.” O’Neil tossed the Sig Sauer onto the bed. “Come on.” He gripped Dave’s shoulder, tugged. “Down the hall, then left. Move.” Andy’s room. Dave peered into the shadows. Was there anything here to grab and bring down on O’Neil’s head? The television set was too big. A lamp? He was past the lamp when he decided on it. He made to turn, and the gun barrel rapped his head. Right where Dallas Engstrom’s had rapped it the other day. This brought on such pain that he changed his mind about trying to fight, and stepped out into the patio.
“How the hell did you find me?”
O’Neil grunted. “Some idiot at Channel Three relayed your message to Cecil Harris on the van’s two-way radio, while it was parked outside my house. Loud and clear.”
“What have you done to him?”
“He’s all right. Too smart for his own good, though. Like you. And it’s going to kill you both. And the other guys too. I really hate that. See what you caused, coming after me for killing Vaughn? Why? He was trash.”
“After he came back from Hetzel’s”—Dave walked along the edge of the darkly glistening pool—“he worked briefly for Thomas Marketing, and he somehow stumbled on the fact that you were substituting false names for real ones on the winner’s list in the Shopwise Sweepstakes, and he was blackmailing you. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“He wanted it to be Sylvia,” O’Neil said. “He wanted to destroy her, and he wanted his father to see it happen. It wasn’t Sylvia, of course. This thing took brains. I rigged the whole scam right under her nose and she never even noticed.” He laughed. “Vaughn was disappointed at that, but he soon figured out that two hundred fifty thousand dollars would make him feel all better again.” O’Neil grunted. “Greedy little bastard. Half. He wanted half.”
“Nothing greedy about you,” Dave said.
“I earned it,” O’Neil said. “What tipped you to me?”
“Papers. You’d planned to go right from the Combat Zone to Vaughn’s place. He had copies of those winner lists, didn’t he, the true one and the one you’d phonied up to line your own pockets? It stands to reason. He’d have to have documented proof to make his threats against you work. You had to get those papers. But something delayed you.”
“Sylvia.” O’Neil snorted. “The big executive. Without me, she’s helpless. She’d promised me Sunday off. What did I get? Two hours in the morning.”
“Just time enough to kill Vaughn,” Dave said. “And not until Monday night, when the Sweepstakes was a wrap, could you cut free to get to Vaughn’s place, break in, and look for the papers, but you didn’t find them. Which meant Jemmie had them with her, didn’t she? You scared old Kaminsky into telling you where she’d gone, and as soon as you could find an open office, you rented a car, raced down here, used up half a day trying to find Jemmie, shot her, and took back those papers. In broad daylight. That was risky.”
“I got away with it,” O’Neil said.
“As a matter of fact, you made two mistakes.” Dave stopped and faced him. “First, you took away her shoulder bag. She didn’t own jewelry or money. What did that leave? The LAPD had searched that apartment and hadn’t found one scrap of paper. That was odd. And oddities bother me. You should have left the bag. You weren’t thinking.”
“I was half out of my mind. It was blind luck I even found her. I’d been searching for hours when little Mike ran out of that house and she came out to drag him back in.”
“Mike was your other mistake. He’s not dead, you know.”
“What?” O’Neil’s voice cracked.
“No, he couldn’t identify you,” Dave said, “but he could tell me Vaughn was expecting to come into a lot of money very soon. Where from? The timing said it almost had to be the Sweepstakes. But how? That’s when I suggested Cecil interview the winners.”
“Yeah, right. Okay, enough. Get moving.” O’Neil pushed Dave in the chest with the rifle butt. The tiles were slippery. Dave lost his footing and fell. “Get up.” O’Neil bent over him. Dave kicked. His boot caught O’Neil in the face. Blood spurted. The rifle spun high into the darkness. O’Neil teetered, waved his arms, and splashed backward into the pool.
Dave knelt to help him. The pool was suddenly blue. The patio blazed with light. A voice said, “Brandstetter—what the hell’s going on?” Claude Rose stood at the gate in his rumpled uniform. “Don’t do that.” He spoke over his shoulder. Lowry crowded past him, came running, and dragged O’Neil from the pool, water streaming from his long hair.
“He doesn’t look it,” Dave said, “but he’s a killer. Handcuff him.” And to Rose, “You said you weren’t coming.”
“I just drove out to see if Hetzel took your bait. He didn’t, did he?” Rose twitched a wry smile. “I never thought he would. Alexander’s going to have to take him to court for them reports on Thomas to do him any good.”
“You thought he’d come,” Dave said. “Or you wouldn’t be here. Lucky for me you’re braver than your words.”
“I’m not. Would’ve kept right on going if it wasn’t for that vehicle.” Rose eyed O’Neil sourly as Lowry shoved him past, gagging and dripping. “Big new TV van. There’s an LAPD bulletin out on that. Stolen. Only how did it get clear down to Winter Creek? And why? And what the hell’s it doing abandoned in Ralph Alexander’s driveway? I wondered did it have something to do with you, went to have a look, heard your voice over the fence, and—”
Dave went to him. “There were three men in that van.”
Rose nodded. “Tied up and gagged.”
“Cecil?” Dave stepped toward the gate. He didn’t have to. Cecil ambled in. “No need to shout,” he said. “I’m fine. A little stiff in the joints is all.” A broad strip of adhesive tape was in his hand. He was trying to rub the white stickum from the adhesive tape off his mouth. He worked up a sort of smile. “Do me a favor? Don’t suggest any more news stories to me?”
“If you don’t suggest any more murder cases to me.”
Cecil held out a palm. Dave slapped it.
“Done,” they said together, and laughed—but not because either of them thought anything was funny.
There was endless red tape to unsnarl in Winter Creek, so they didn’t reach Horseshoe Canyon Trail until almost dawn, and it was noon before the heat of the sun through the leaf-strewn panes of the skylight over the broad bed on the loft woke Dave. Cecil sprawled beside him in long-limbed nakedness, face down, smooth skin glossy with sweat. Dave got up quietly, dragged the blue corduroy robe off the rail, flapped into it, and yawned his way downstairs to shower. Bathed and shaved, he crossed the courtyard’s uneven bricks to the cookshack, where he took eggs and half a ham from the refrigerator Amanda had updated inside an immense old oaken icebox. He placed eggs and ham on the counter to lose their chill, and squeezed orange juice. He drank some from his glass, assembled the makings of coffee and set a burner going under it, then blended butter and flour and milk in the top of a double boiler over a low fire as the basis for a cheese sauce. English muffins. He rummaged these out, fork split them, dropped them into the toaster to wait, then carried Cecil’s orange juice across to the rear building. When he stepped inside, music drifted down to him—Chet Baker’s trumpet, sweet and bleeding. Dave climbed the plank steps. Cecil lay on his back, hands clasped behind his head, and stared up at the skylight, open now. A breeze came through it. He turned to look at Dave, tears in his eyes.
Dave stopped. “What’s the matter?”
“What isn’t the matter?” Cecil laughed a wobbly laugh, sat up, wiped the tears with his fingers, reached for the glass. “All those people dead. All the fear and grief.”
“It’s over now,” Dave said. “Try to forget it.”
“How have you lived with it so long? I’ve only been with you a few years, and I can’t handle any more.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you in. It seems to happen. I forget it’s not your game.”
“‘Game?’” Cecil shut his eyes, hung his head, looked up, and said, “Dave, how can you call it a game?”
“You have to call it something,” Dave said. “This one was for half a million dollars. A gamble.”
“He was crazy,” Cecil said. “You know what he did down there? He didn’t know where Alexander’s place was, so he stopped at the sheriff’s station, walked in, and asked.”
“He had another reason,” Dave said. “He thought I might be there. While you’re mourning, count the deputies on duty who are alive because I wasn’t there.”
“But what if they’d seen the truck?”
“Why did he take the truck anyway?” Dave said. “Nothing could be more conspicuous.”
“Because he couldn’t fit us all in his car,” Cecil said.
“You were three against one,” Dave said. “How did he take you all prisoner?”
Cecil shrugged. “He had a gun. He got the jump on us. He made us tie each other up. Inside the van. He taped our mouths. It was weird. Noon. Cars driving by. Stared right at us—I mean, a TV remote truck, what’s going on, right? You think anybody stopped? Shee-it.”
“O’Neil gauged the world by his own sick standards,” Dave said, “and for a while it worked for him.”
“He could have been crazier,” Cecil said gloomily. “He could have killed us right there.”
“Better to do it at midnight,” Dave said, “out in the wilderness of Fortuna County, and dump the bodies where they might never be found.”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 18
