"Thank you," Susan said.
"Yeah," I said. Hawk nodded. For Hawk that was bathetic gratitude.
"Samuelson," Conway said. "I'll remember."
"Luck," I said.
"You too," Conway said, and turned and walked away.
"What do we do," Susan said.
"I think maybe we get you back home," Hawk said.
"No," she said. "I came out here to help and I will."
I nodded. Hawk grinned. "Spenser ain't the only one stubborn," he said.
"But it doesn't mean I wish to sit here and be arrested," Susan said.
"No," I said. "Let's repair to the Jaguar and cruise around and think."
"Two things at the same time," Hawk said. He put a twenty on the bar and we walked out.
Chapter 30
In the parking lot Hawk took a .12-gauge shotgun out of the trunk and a box of ammunition. He fed four shells into the magazine and handed me the gun and the extra ammo. I got in the backseat with the shotgun. Hawk and Susan got in front. Hawk drove.
"We can't leave Caroline," Susan said. "For whatever reason she seems to have fixed on Spenser as her salvation. Her husband and son have, in a manner of speaking, abandoned her. If Spenser does as well it might very well kill her."
"We stay here," Hawk said, "we gonna have to shoot up a mess of Wheaton cops."
"I know," Susan said.
"There ain't but maybe fifty of them," Hawk said.
"But then all the other cops in the world will be on our case," I said.
"We may run out of ammunition," Hawk said.
"She's suicidal?" I said.
"Yes," Susan said. "She's suicidal and she's got this fixed notion that somehow if you stick by her she may not have to die."
Hawk shook his head. We were cruising away from Wheaton out toward the reservoir. He said, "A fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie."
Susan was half turned in the front seat so she could talk to both Hawk and me. Her arm rested along the back of the seat. I had the shotgun leaning against my left thigh, the butt on the floor. Susan turned her head fully toward me.
"She feels guilty about her husband," Susan said. She wasn't quite looking at me. She wasn't quite looking at anything. She had her head tilted slightly downward the way she did when she was thinking. I waited. The headlights on the jag made an empty tunnel into the darkness ahead of us.
"Could she have killed him?" I said.
"Yes, she could have. I don't think so, but it's possible."
Snow was spitting again, just hard enough for Hawk to turn on the wipers. He set them at INTERVAL and their periodic pass across the windshield seemed arrhythmic in its spacing.
"But she's feeling guilty about his death?" I said.
"About her husband," Susan said. "Whether about his death, I don't know."
The wipers made one sweep and the empty tunnel ahead was a little clearer. There was more snow spit. The windshield beaded slowly, some of the flakes melted and formed little lines of trickle. Then the wiper blades made another pass and the emptiness was clear again.
"Maybe this isn't about cocaine," I said.
"Maybe some of it is," Hawk said.
"Yeah. But maybe all of it isn't," I said.
"You thinking hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate?" Hawk said.
"Maybe," I said.
"Makes the world go round," Hawk said.
"That's love," I said.
"Same thing," Hawk said.
"Not always," Susan said.
The Jaguar was almost soundless as it purred through the inconsistent snowfall in the dark.
"We have to talk with her," Susan said. "It's a difficult time for her, but . . ." Susan shook her head.
"Time like this she may say things she'd not say if everything was more cohesive," I said. Susan nodded.
"Still it might be pretty bad for her to be questioned about things like this now."
"I'm not worried about her," Susan said. "Right now I'm worried about you. They're going to frame you on a cocaine charge."
"Yes."
"And they can probably make it stick. You did hijack three hundred pounds of it."
"Kilos," I said.
"Kilos, pounds, whatever," Susan said.
"And you got two hundred keys in Henry Cimoli's cellar," Hawk said.
"So they can have police arrest you anywhere. You can't be safe by merely staying out of Wheaton."
"True," I said.
"And surely you can't be safe by staying in Wheaton."
"True also," I said.
"So we have to talk with Caroline," Susan said.
"And if this is too much for her, too soon right after her tragedy?" I said.
"Then it is," Susan said. "I don't think it will be. I don't think she has a future unless we get this unraveled. But if it destroys her, then it destroys her. I will not let it destroy you," she said.
"Your car's back at the motel," Hawk said to Susan.
"Yes. So are my clothes and my makeup. My God, my entire face is in the motel room."
"No," I said. "Stay out of the motel room. If they got hold of you they'd use you to get me."
"My entire face," Susan said.
I said, "Forget the face."
We were all quiet for a space as the wipers made their idiosyncratic sweeps of the windshield.
"Okay," Susan said. "But you can't look at me again."
"I'll stare only at your body," I said.
"So we going to see Miss Caroline?" Hawk said.
"Best I can think of," I said.
Hawk slowed, and swung the Jaguar in an easy U-turn.
"You figure the cops be busy at the motel framing us?"
"I hope so," I said. "They have no reason to think we know."
"Unless, of course, that kid," Susan said, "what was his name . . . ?"
"Conway."
"Unless Conway was lying."
"To what end," I said.
"An end we don't know," Susan said.
"Always possible," I said. "But complicated."
"Yes," Susan said.
"When in doubt I tend to go for the simple," I said.
"Except for me," Susan said.
"About you," I said, "I'm not in doubt."
"So we'll act as if Conway was telling the truth," Susan said.
"It's the best information we've got."
"And if it's wrong?"
"Readiness is all," I said.
Chapter 31
At seven-thirty in the evening Wheaton was not lively. Everyone was in watching Entertainment Tonight. The snow made things even quieter than usual. There was a town Yuck with a plow on the front and a sand spreader on the back moving slowly along Main Street. No cops, no roadblocks, nobody saying "ten four" into a microphone. Just a couple of teenage boys in maroon satin jack` ets with WHEATON on the back, in chenille lettering, near the pizza place trying to make snowballs with insufficient snow.
Caroline didn't seem surprised to see us when we arrived. Hawk put his car in the empty stall of her two-car garage next to a jeep station wagon and closed the garage doors. He came in carrying the shotgun and the box of shells.
"Never had a second car," Caroline said. "Bailey always used the unmarked cruiser. Now Henry's got it." She stared at Hawk and the shotgun but she didn't say anything, and she shook hands politely when I introduced them. Hawk put the shells on the coffee table.
"Will you have coffee?" Caroline said.
"No," I said. "Keep me awake all night."
Hawk said, "I hope you'll pardon me," to Caroline. "I need to take a look around." She smiled as politely as she'd shaken hands.
"Certainly," she said.
Hawk moved off through the house. I heard him slide the chain bolt on the back door. Caroline sat on the couch, at the end opposite from the shotgun shells. Susan sat beside her. I sat across from them in the wing chair next to the fireplace.
"Is there something wrong," Caroline said. She had a bright perky quality that was
as natural as a neon light.
"Yes," Susan said. "There is and we need to talk."
"What else could go wrong," Caroline said. It was as if she'd had a trying day where the washing machine jammed and the cat threw up on the rug.
"The Wheaton police seem to be conspiring with Esteva and are going to shoot Spenser," Susan said.
"The police?"
"Yes."
"What did you do," Caroline said.
"He seemed to be making some progres toward solving the murders," Susan said "and interrupting the drug traffic here in Wheaton."
That was a considerable exaggeration of my progress but I didn't interrupt. Susan probably knew what she was doing. It was probably a nice feeling.
"My husband's murder?"
"Yes."
"You think the police are connected with Esteva?" Caroline said.
"Yes."
"Not my husband."
Susan nodded very slightly. I could see the professional self slowly slide into place. She sat perfectly still, and her nod was not firm enough for agreement, nor lateral enough to imply disapproval. It was merely a movement of the head that said, oh? tell me more.
"My husband never betrayed that uniform," Caroline said. "My husband was an honest man."
Susan made her little head movement again. Hawk came silently back into the room and leaned against the jamb of the archway behind the wing chair where I sat.
"He wasn't being paid by Esteva?" Susan said.
"No, absolutely not. He was . . . he was too fine a man." Her voice shook a little. "He was too fine a man to ever sell out. He cared about that job almost as much as his family. He was too fine."
"Do you know who was selling out?" Susan said.
"No, I don't. No one . . ." Her eyes wandered away from Susan. Outside the windows the snow was coming a little harder than it had, still and gentle, but persistent. "Bailey was a wonderful father," Caroline said. "A wonderful husband. He would never betray us." Her voice shook again and she paused and the room was quiet. None of us moved. Susan was looking at her steadily, neutrally. Behind me I could hear Hawk's breathing. I could hear mine too.
"He loved Brett when he was little, he was always carrying him on his shoulders. He loved me. He would have stood on his head for me. He loved his little family." Caroline's voice was stronger now. Flattened by medication, but firm.
"But Esteva hired his son," Susan said.
"He didn't. I mean he didn't do that because of Bailey."
Susan was quiet.
"He hired Brett ... Brett needed a job. Brett was a good boy. He hired him. I don't know why he hired him. Just that Brett was a good boy. Like his father."
Caroline was barely there with us. She was talking about people we didn't know, about a Bailey and a Brett I'd never seen. The ones I'd seen were alike. They were both a mess, and getting messier. Until the process came to a sudden end.
"Bailey would never betray me," she said. The snow collected in the corners now of the window sash in little picturesque triangles. Fa la la la la.
"Who did he betray?" Susan said. Caroline shook her head. Outside on the road a town truck went by pushing a plow, making the distinctive rattle and scrape that plows make, with the clatter of chains mixed in.
"Brett was slow," Caroline said. She shook her head again and looked at her lap. "He tried so hard, but he was slow. He could never be the man that Bailey was, that Bailey wanted . . . that Bailey deserved. We tried, but . . ."
"It's hard living someone else's definition," Susan said.
Caroline looked up at her and frowned. "Excuse me?" she said.
"Trying to be exactly what someone else thinks you should be must be very difficult," Susan said.
"Oh, yes. Yes, it is, damned hard. I tried for fifteen years."
Susan made her little neutral nod again. "As hard as I could, so hard," Caroline said, and shook her head. She looked in her lap again. She was wearing a light gray flannel skirt and a dark blue pullover sweater. A green silk scarf was knotted at her neck, and her thick hair was carefully brushed back, and tied with a green silk ribbon.
"He wanted, he wanted everything to be right. He was so fine a man. He deserved to have it right."
"Umm," Susan said.
Caroline shook her head again, this time more quickly as if to shake away something. "But it wasn't. I couldn't. I couldn't live that way anymore."
"Yes," Susan said. "That would be too hard."
Two tears started in Caroline Rogers's eyes and ran down her cheeks. Two more followed. She wasn't boohooing, the tears merely came as she sat there. She wiped her right eye with the knuckle of her forefinger. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Let the tears come," Susan said. "See what comes with them."
She wiped at the other eye, then she put her hands back in her lap and the tears came faster. Then she put her hands up to her face and her shoulders hunched as she really cried.
"I begged him," she said. "I begged him to think of us. To think of Brett, if he didn't care about me."
She seemed to speak only during moments of breath catching, moments of clarity in a murk of sobbing. Susan seemed to understand the pattern.
"What did he say?" Susan said at the right moment.
"He said Brett was lucky his father had connections, he couldn't get a job by himself." Her breathing was very short.
Susan nodded. Caroline sobbed, struggling to talk at the same time.
"A job," she gasped. "As if a job with a dope dealer was a good thing."
She was panting now and crying and talking in a burst as if she couldn't wait to get it all said.
"As if having a father who was a dope dealer was a good thing . . . as if a whoremaster was a good thing . . . as if Brett should grow up and be like him . . ." Caroline stopped, she seemed almost to be choking. ". . . to be like him," she gasped. She slipped from the chair onto her knees on the floor. "LIKE HIM," she gasped. She had doubled over, her face in her hands, her body rocking.
I looked at Hawk. He had no expression. I looked at Susan. She was watching Caroline. The force of her concentration was almost palpable.
"Did Bailey have an affair?" Susan said. Caroline nodded without ceasing to rock, doubled over on her knees on the floor. "Did he work with Esteva?"
Caroline nodded again.
"Who did he have an affair with?" Caroline stopped rocking and raised her face toward Susan, a look of amazement on her face. As if Susan had asked her which way was up. Her voice was suddenly clear. "Emmy," she said. "Emmy Esteva." Who could not know that?
"That was painful," Susan said. Caroline nodded.
"How did you deal with it?"
"I tried, I tried to be a woman he would want, to live up to what he expected . . ." "That's hard," Susan said. "Isn't it?" Caroline nodded again.
"Too hard," Susan said.
"Yes."
"So what did you do?" Caroline shook her head.
"Did you have any help?" Susan said.
"Not for a long time," Caroline said. "Finally I told Dr. Wagner."
"Yes," Susan said. "What did you tell him?"
Caroline looked horrified. "Not about Bailey," she said. "Just about feeling depressed and that there was some trouble in the family."
Susan nodded.
"And Dr. Wagner sent me to see a social worker at the hospital," Caroline said. There was a moment of silence while the snow drifted against the windows in the living room.
"Who?" Susan said.
"A young Hispanic woman," Caroline said. "Miss Olmo."
"How often did you see her?"
"Once a week for about three months."
"And you told her about Bailey?"
"Not at first," Caroline said. "But Miss Olmo said if she was going to help me she had to have my trust."
"Of course," Susan said.
"So I told her everything."
Susan nodded again. "Did you tell anyone else about Bailey?"
"Oh, my God, no," Caroline said. "N
o one." I glanced at Hawk, leaning on the doorjamb with the shotgun. He was glancing at me. "The thing is," Caroline said, "even after I told her, it didn't help. Now it's too late."
"It's not too late," Susan said. "And it will take longer than three months."
"Until what?" Caroline said.
"Until you look forward to morning," Susan said.
Caroline shook her head.
"Yes," Susan said. "I'll help you. He'll help you. You don't believe it now, but it will get better."
Caroline said nothing. She simply sat and stared out the front window at the snow sifting lightly down through the darkness outside her house.
Chapter 32
Hawk drove and I sat beside him with the shotgun. The snow was still gentle and there were pauses in its fall as if it were deciding whether to be a blizzard.
"I come out here to whack a couple of dope pushers and I end up in encounter therapy," Hawk said. "Like hanging out with Dr. Ruth."
"You'll get your turn," I said.
" 'Spect I will," Hawk said.
Juanita Olmo's house was a ten-minute drive through the casual snowfall. We saw nothing but one town truck sanding the plowed road, and a young man and woman pulling a child on a sled. The child was so bundled up that its gender was a mystery and in fact its species was only a logical guess.
We pulled up in front of an old frame duplex in the valley behind the mills along the Wheaton River. The siding was red asphalt shingle. There were three cars dusted with snow parked in the unshoveled driveway.
One of them was Juanita's Escort. She answered the door in jeans and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. She looked at me and then at Hawk. Hawk was carrying the shotgun. She looked quickly back at me.
"Ptarmigan," I said. "My friend is a ptarmigan hunter."
"What do you want," Juanita said.
"We want to come in and talk," I said.
"And if I say no?"
"We come in anyway," I said.
"And if I call the police?"
"We won't let you," I said.
Juanita's face got a little red and her eyes seemed larger.
"Really?" she said.
I stepped into her living room, Hawk followed me and closed the door.
"There are people next door," she said.
Pale Kings and Princes Page 13
