Krug was waiting for him in the squad room, looking predictably mulish and uncooperative; prepared, Casey knew, to buck anything but concrete facts. And he had few. The rest was guessing, supposition, a powerful intuition that he was on the right track. To convince Krug, he realized, he must find some logic narrow enough, unimaginative enough, to be acceptable to a mind already made up. “Just wait, Al,” he began breathlessly. “Let me lay this on you before you start flakking, okay?” He sagged into his desk chair, fishing for a cigarette, but his pack of Carltons was empty. Some days are like this. Not many, I hope. “Okay,” he said quietly, “let’s try a pattern first. I’m talking about Rees and Susannah Roche, Al. Two people who might’ve met by accident. But whether they did or not doesn’t matter. Because any time they spent together after they met wasn’t accidental, right? So the next question is purpose—why they went where they went. That make sense so far?”
Krug shrugged. “You’re doing the talking.”
“Okay, all we’ve got to go on is what Rees told us. Dinner and a party. We know there was a party. We know the people who gave it were her partners in the counterfeiting deal. What we don’t know is if Rees was part of it, but that doesn’t matter either. All that matters is they went to the party for a reason. That part of the evening wasn’t fun and games. So what about the other part, Al?” Casey leaned forward. “What about that boozy leisurely dinner while her million-dollar caper was coming unstuck?”
THIRTY-TWO
The neon sign he remembered was still lighted, but the parking lot looked almost empty tonight. Making a U-turn on the highway, Rees pulled into the lot, letting the Volkswagen roll across the graveled surface until it stopped from lack of momentum.
With the motor killed and the loud brittle crunching of the tires ended, the quiet seemed like sudden deafness. Then he heard the sea—not a pounding tonight, but a slow rolling murmur as subtle and pervasive as a heartbeat. But slower than his own. Uneven. Sucking in the cool salt air blowing through his open car window, he felt a collapse in himself, a change of pitch which he hoped was only a let-down from the tension of high-speed driving. But past experience had shown him the alchemy of the loser—desperation changed swiftly into helpless despair, vitality into the sluggishness which Stevens had called—
“Oh, Christ,” he groaned aloud. Quit thinking. And quit, for God’s sake, quoting Stevens to yourself. Time to move now. Time to act. Like a blind man looking for light at the end of a tunnel.
The restaurant building was two-storied, flanked on either side—Rees noticed vaguely as he approached it scuffing through the fine gravel—with two wings of fencing painted the same color as the building. The southern fence shielded what must be a large scullery and storage area—perhaps a delivery dock also—since part of the fence was hinged, forming wide double gates. The shorter section of fencing to the north had been built to close off public access to the beach. He spied above it a stairway, but no gate in the fence.
Lights burned in the upstairs windows, he saw, dim behind drawn draperies. Two rooms up there, he decided. Perhaps three. An office and a small apartment? Someone there Susannah had seen briefly. With a message, perhaps. Gossip, something. Possibly another strand in the invisible web of violence and sudden death which had caught him like a passing fly.
Opening the heavy door into the restaurant, he saw that the place was almost empty. A thin chain closed off the dining area. On it hung a hand-lettered sign saying, Sorry no food due to kitchen disaster. The only customers were a noisy group of drinkers at the bar. Freddy seemed to be urging them all to leave. And when he spied Rees standing in the nightclubby dimness of the foyer, he shrieked exasperatedly, “Sorry, we’re closing!”
Rees headed for the stairway.
“Wait a minute, sweetie.” Freddy was rushing across the bar area. “If you’re looking for the—Oh.” Obviously recognizing Rees, he stopped. “Don’t believe this,” he breathed. “What’re you doing here? You’re—”
“Like to talk to whoever was upstairs—”
“—supposed to be—What?What did you say?”
“Last evening.” The fool must be drunk. Repelled by the made-up masklike face, Rees smiled stiffly. “It’s a private matter. So if he’s there, I’ll just go up if you don’t mind.”
But Freddy didn’t move. And short of shoving him aside, Rees realized he wasn’t going to get by without some sort of explanation. Try the truth? he wondered. No, too hazardous. Don’t forget you’re a blind man in a tunnel.
“It’s about Susannah,” he explained, trying to conceal his desperation. “You heard what happened?” But there was no response. “She died early this morning. A fall from her apartment—”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
Drunk surely. And another one upstairs? Ignoring the brutal answer to Freddy’s brutal question, Rees said evenly, “The police seem to think she killed herself. I didn’t believe it at first. But now I think maybe she did. Anyway, it—well, it bothers me. You can understand. I’m trying to find people she talked to yester—”
“My God, a pilgrimage? Is that what you’re here for?” Freddy cackled wildly. “Now I’ve heard—But what makes you think we’d know anything about it?”
“A little while after we arrived last night, I saw her talking to someone on the stairs. And since it’s marked private—”
“Did you.” Freddy’s voice fell, but he was smiling brilliantly now. “Aren’t we the perceptive one, though.” He peered beyond Rees. “And you’re alone? A lonely pilgrim.” he giggled, waving airily in the direction of the stairs. “If you can find anybody to talk to, have at it, sweetie.”
The short carpeted flight climbed to a small landing where the stairs turned, behind a wall, in the opposite direction. Another few steps led up to a door which stood open. Rees hesitated, then stepped into a large lamplit apartment. Windows on the west, the sea side, stood open, the draperies billowing out, giving him a glimpse of a narrow sun deck. Two inner doors to other rooms were closed. He could hear no sound of anyone moving about, but Rees was confident that someone was here. Had to be. Because, in an ashtray, a small cigar was smoldering, half smoked.
“Hello,” he called. “Anybody home?”
The cigar fumed silently, fueling his prickly sense that someone was watching him. But it might be only his own apprehension, he knew, the guilty feeling of intruding into a strange and secretive world.
“Good night—good night,” Freddy’s peevish voice floated hollowly up the stairwell. Rushing closing time, Rees thought. If you can find anybody to talk to. Remembering Freddy’s mocking cackle, he knew he’d been a fool to come here.
But too late for that now—he had to satisfy himself. His footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting, Rees moved toward the closed inner doors. The first he knocked on, then opened, let into a bathroom which was dark and smelled of aftershave. The second showed him a bedroom lit by lamps, his own image peering through the doorway reflected back by the mirrored far wall. A whorehouse bedroom, but with one difference: all the explicit nudes covering the other three walls were males.
Outside in the parking lot, car doors slammed; someone laughed shrilly. Motors roared, revved up drunkenly. Then headlights swept like beacons across the drawn draperies over the land-side windows. Rees heard a door banging downstairs—the heavy restaurant entrance, he guessed. Freddy would be up the stairs in a minute.
Crossing to the French windows, he parted the lightly blowing draperies. But the deck was empty, spume-dampened, the sea beyond shining like polished obsidian. At high tide, he thought vaguely, you could probably surf-cast from here—
“You looking for somebody?”
Turning quickly, startled by the nearness of the bulky figure behind him, Rees recognized Mr. America, the muscular narcissus of the life-sized picture hanging behind the bar downstairs. “Oh, hello,” he said conventionally, his heart leaping with shock. “Sorry to barge in—” But something remote, blank-looking in the oth
er man’s face stopped him. Rees stepped back, tripping over the sill of the French doors to the sun deck. And falling heavily, he stared up into a face as pitiless as a stone god’s. Set yourself up, Stevens’s voice boomed like a bell in his mind. Whatever it looks like, it’s hopelessness. But this is someone else’s nightmare, he thought sadly. Then pile-driver fists hit him, and his mind exploded into blackness.
THIRTY-THREE
Coastal traffic was light at this hour—too early for trucks, too late for joy riders—only an occasional southbound traveler causing Casey to lower his high beams. To their right the clifflike, fragile palisades walling the land side of the highway seemed to hang over them, threatening more slides at any moment. On the sea side of the road, through occasional gaps between clusters of beach houses, the surf gleamed phosphorescent against the black. Far out to sea, a pinprick shiplight flickered.
“Fishing barge,” Krug grunted. “Took the wife out there once about ten years ago. Mrs. Isaak Walton, catches her limit in an hour. Rest of the day she’s bitching at me to go home. How anybody can spend a whole day fishing is beyond her—quote, unquote.” His bucket seat creaked when he swiveled to face Casey, trying to peer beyond him at house numbers. “Ought to be there in a couple minutes.” Casey glimpsed a dim smile. “You going to spell out the rest before we get there—or do we keep on playing your bubble game?”
So much for trying to fox your foxy uncle. Feeling like a deflated balloon, Casey slowed slightly. “While I was still at the hospital, I called that waiter. Charley. He wasn’t in, but I talked to his mother again.”
“Lucky you.”
“She gave me the name of the chef at the restaurant. Seems he’s another of Charley’s favorites. Joe Cummings. Lives at Trancas.”
“And?”
“He claims the restaurant stove was working fine last night. First he heard of any trouble was when Freddy called him just before he left for work.”
“So what’s that mean? The stove could’ve blown up sometime during the night.”
“Okay, here’s another piece. Charley’s mother said she gave him our card. But he called the restaurant instead of calling us.”
“So?”
“Who he talked to was the ex-female impersonator. His name’s Freddy Hassler. Got a record in San Francisco—morals stuff. Description makes him about thirty, five-five, skinny build, blond.”
Krug exhaled softly. “So you got it all figured out, hah? My partner, the showboat.”
On a pendulum, he swung in and out of consciousness, aware only of pain at first; then of movement; then, when motion ceased, of voices muttering.
He was lying on cement, Rees realized vaguely. Lying on his side in a dark place that smelled of cooking grease and food. A kitchen?
“Get his car in first,” a guttural voice very close to him said. “I’ll get the truck ready.”
A door opened somewhere out of Rees’s view, letting in cool sea air and a strong smell of garbage. Nauseated, dizzy, he tried to turn his head away, but the bones in his neck grated agonizingly. His head pounded. His arms and legs felt paralyzed—bound tightly, he realized, at his wrists and ankles. What a fool he’d been to think this was someone else’s nightmare.
From outside came a grating sound. Something heavy being dragged across gravel, Rees guessed. The wide gates in the south-side fence? This must be the restaurant kitchen, then. They had carried him down the interior stairs.
He heard a Volkswagen start, gears clashing, the jerky progress of tires across gravel. Raising himself with a stifled groan, Rees peered around the shadowy kitchen. No one here now. Both outside. He began hitching himself across the greasy floor until he was able to see out the door.
A huge shadow which he recognized as a truck blocked his view upward. He heard a wooden banging, as if someone was shifting heavy floorboards, and the whirring change of motor pitch as the Volkswagen was jockeyed back and forth again and again. His ground-level view seemed full of wheels. Two or three vehicles, he decided—the truck, the Volkswagen and another standard-sized car of some sort, all contained in the large fenced-in kitchen enclosure.
“Okay, hold it,” a deep voice was saying commandingly. “Close the gate, and I’ll get him.”
Listening to the heavy grating sound again, the crunch of approaching footsteps, Rees struggled to free his hands. But the bonds were so tight they cut into his flesh and tendons—not a chance of loosening them, he realized. And the big man coming for him. So play possum then? But they would realize he had moved, he thought desperately. Got to get back there. If he had a chance at all, it would be in waiting to see what happened.
Scrabbling frantically, he inched himself backward across the greasy cement as far as he could. Then he lay rigid on his side, willing himself to relax as someone bent over him breathing hard. He felt hands under his shoulders and knees. Hands as big as mitts, as hard as iron. Then he was lifted like a child and carried out.
Head spinning, Rees risked a glimpse through slitted lids—a truck opened to receive cargo, two boards slanting like a runway into the truck bed from the ground. And positioned to be loaded was his Volkswagen, passenger door open, Freddy behind the wheel. Someone else’s nightmare. And he saw now its pattern.
Struggling frantically, Rees opened his mouth to yell. But before he could, steely fingers clamped his throat shut. And he knew this time he was dying.
“—Timing more than anything makes it hang together, Al. I’m just guessing, but what I think happened is this: by the time they got the U-Haul stashed, something went wrong. Otherwise they would’ve dumped the stuff and got rid of the truck.”
“What makes you think they didn’t? Same deal as the Mercedes maybe. Stashed it in a garage someplace.”
“Then why the delay, Al? Why wait four or five hours to kill the Godwins?” And four or five hours after that, he thought, to make the anonymous call. “Whatever happened, I’ve got a feeling time may be short, Al.” Feeling like Scheherazade, Casey increased his speed as smoothly as an old lady’s chauffeur. “If they were pinned down. You see what I mean? And they got panicky—?”
“Yeah, I see all right.” Krug was peering through the windshield. “Looks like the slide’s just about cleared away.” Then he turned, glaring at Casey. “So what kept ’em after the road crews split?”
“Business, Al.”
“The hell it did. Look there”—he was pointing—“their neon sign’s out.”
“That’s what I meant about time being short. They were open less than an hour ago.”
“Pull up across the road. Pull up, goddam you—I’m not running into no buzz saw without some backup units behind me!”
Using the Mustang’s motor compression to brake, Casey shifted down and doused his headlights, rolling to a silent stop across the highway from the restaurant. The building was dark, he saw. Except for a dim glow—possibly a nightlight—emanating from the large fenced enclosure to the south. The tarpulin-covered, shedlike outline looming over the fence which he had noticed earlier seemed more clearly defined than he remembered. Then he realized why: the tarp must be gone. And what it had covered was not crates, a shed, or building materials. Casey knew now that his sense of urgency had been correct.
Crimping the wheel, he floored the accelerator, roaring across the highway in front of an oncoming car. Krug’s howling protest was drowned by the machine-gun rattle of gravel pellets under the fenders as they streaked across the parking lot. Casey flicked on the high beams, then stood on the brake. The silhouette, silvery and three-dimensional now, was the top of an aluminum truck with orange-painted lettering barely visible over the fence: U-Haul.
Krug leaped out, stumbling, while the Mustang was still sliding broadside beyond the closed fence gate. “Police,” he roared. “Come out with your hands up!”
There was no answer, no sound at all except the pulsing of the sea and the Mustang’s idling. Krug shoved at the gates where they came together, but the two wings held solid. Peering through
the crack between them, he shook his head. “Can’t see a damn thing.”
“I’ll try the other side, Al. There’s a stairway—”
Krug was pounding on the heavy restaurant door by this time. “Talk about foul-ups. You and your goddam solo acts!”
There was no access to the stair Casey could spy above the northside fence. Obviously it led down to the beach. “Have to climb this, I guess.”
“Yeah, you do that. And if it’s the wrong U-Haul, we’ll have sixteen wop lawyers—What’s that?”
Wood scraping on wood. “Al, the gate—”
But Krug was already in motion, sprinting heavily along the front of the building. Casey caught up with him just as a starter whirred and a heavy motor boomed, backfiring. Krug grabbed him. “Watch it!” Then a splintering crash deafened them.
Both gates exploded open, the wing nearest Krug and Casey scything the air like a projectile, slamming against the stationary part of the fence with such force that the thick boards cracked open. Exhaust billowing behind it, a truck shot out, slewing across the parking lot, spraying sheets of gravel. Tires screeching on the pavement, it rocked onto the highway, swinging north while, simultaneously inside the enclosure, another vehicle started up.
Against all regulation procedure, Krug jumped into the sudden blinding glare of headlights, taking a target-shooting stance—feet apart, Detective Special firm in both hands at nearly arm’s length. “Police officer,” he was yelling. “Douse those lights!”
There was a moment when nothing happened, and covering his partner, Casey shouted a warning. Then the headlights went out. He began to breathe again.
“All right, out of there,” Krug yelled. “Move it!”
The door on the driver’s side of the Dodge van inside the enclosure opened, and moving with glacial slowness, a dim figure climbed out.
Susannah Screaming (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 2) Page 16
