The Cavanaugh Quest

by Thomas Gifford

  “Right,” I said.

  “Without a tip, then, the police investigation almost assuredly will run into heavy going. When they are driven to fall back on deductive reasoning—rather than prints, MO’s, clues, names on file, and so on—then the poor devils begin to come undone. They’re not trained to be psychologists or historians, both of which are required here, and they are trained to weed out whatever imagination they have … I’ve known only one cop in my entire life who had imagination, real creativity, a man named Olaf Peterson, used to work here in Minneapolis but he married rich and cleared out to a little place called Cooper’s Falls, but that’s another story—anyway, the police are just trained away from using their imagination, from indulging in luxuriant hypotheses, because technology has tyrannized them, they’re slaves to all their machines and to their stool pigeons … not much romance in it anymore. But still, once in a while there comes a case like this one, which I believe will prove to be impenetrable, a thicket of complexity and brambles which will drive the machines back in confusion and will not yield to science!” He stumped over to his desk in search of a match.

  “You should be taping all this,” Julia said reasonably, “it surely belongs in a book. I’m not so sure about real life, but a book, definitely.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to have any luck,” Archie said, lighting up again, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the bookcase, “because they’re going to be looking for a killer. That’s what they’re trained for, find a fingerprint, check an alibi, do ballistics, find a gun, hit the street and shake down the hoods, rattle the underworld until something falls out … We are not, however, dealing with the underworld, the criminal element. There’s something very personal in these killings and the only way we’re going to find out who’s doing them, barring an unforgivable lapse by the killer, the only way is to pinpoint the motive … Going from motive toward the act of murder is not scientific, it’s intuitional, hunch playing, and cops seldom indulge themselves in guessing—which is why I’ve never written a police procedural novel. They tend to leave out the fun, if you see my point.”

  Julia put aside her needlepoint. “End of lecture. Paul, let me get you some coffee. I’m dying to hear what you have to say. Archie, stop pacing, sit down, relax … you’ll have a fit, imminently, if you’re not careful.” She poured coffee for me and got Archie settled behind the cluttered desk. Lightning popped like flashbulbs and the trees and the lawn furniture materialized for a moment like stealthy figures caught in the act, then were gone. “So, what about Boyle? How did you find out? Give us a report.” She settled back on the couch but didn’t resume the needlepoint. Archie sipped his coffee, watched me, his pen ready to jot down notes on the recital. And I began, giving them the full treatment, everything since I’d last seen them; the interviews, a brief once-over of my relationship with Kim, the trip north, Ted and Billy and Kim and the Chat and Chew Cafe. It took me nearly two hours to get it all in and there were almost no interruptions; they paid attention, Archie’s pen scratching steadily. When I finished it was past midnight and rain was beginning to patter in the trees. But we were all wide awake, recipients of a kind of adrenaline rush, the excitement that comes when you know you’re breaking a code, or solving the Times crossword, or creating something that just may be remembered next season.

  Finally Archie got up and came around the desk, sat on the corner, looked at his pad of notes, looked up at us.

  “The problem is,” he said, “as it always is, the problem is to decide on which of the facts and observations is important, which offal. Solve that, solve the case. But here are some aspects, some components, which strike me as possibly crucial.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

  “The behavior of Crocker and Goode when you set Maxvill loose among them. They clam up, quick run bitching to poor Marty, who had himself not wanted to discuss Maxvill, then they go tattling to Hub Anthony with the request that he get you to lay off … and instead of telling them to go to hell, as you’d think he’d do, he quick takes you to lunch at the Minneapolis Club and tells you to drop Maxvill … without giving you any rational explanation. You don’t have to be Ellery Queen to see that there’s something about Carver Maxvill that scares hell out of them. Now, that’s interesting to me … and Mark Bernstein and his flatfoots aren’t going to get anywhere near the truth of it.

  “Second, you, Paul, true to your father’s genes, go immediately from lunch to the newspaper’s morgue to find out what more you can about Carver Maxvill and his strange disappearance. And what happens? Nothing could be more extraordinary than what you found—absolutely nothing. The file has been stolen, a unique occurrence, according to their keeper … but it is gone. Obviously someone else is tremendously interested in Carver Maxvill. It fits. The man himself disappears and incredibly enough thirty years later his file is also gone. Someone is trying to erase him. Very strange.

  “Which leads us to a third point. The stealing of the file marks the third instance of bizarre theft in this case. First Larry Blankenship’s apartment is cleaned of personal matters. Then Tim Dierker’s scrapbook is stolen by his murderer. Now Maxvill’s file …” He beamed at us. “I’ll be interested to know if Father Boyle’s picture collection is gone, as well. It would seem a likely bet, wouldn’t it? Why? Why is all this stuff being snatched up? The answer would tell us the name of the murderer. Absolutely.”

  Julia said, “There’s another point which fascinates me. How many people have you ever known, or known of, who actually disappeared? Just phffft, were gone? Not a great many. In my life no one until I became aware of Carver Maxvill. Now, within the same general grouping there’s another utterly inexplicable, untraced disappearance—Rita Hook’s. One day she’s there, the next day she’s gone. Duplicate of Maxvill. Coincidence? Possibly … but think of the possibility of their disappearances being somehow linked. Then it would count as only one disappearance on a statistical frequency table … and it wouldn’t be quite so astonishing. But to have to swallow two stories like that? I have a hard time doing it. Think I’m crazy if you like, but I say there’s a connection between the two disappearances, Carver’s and Rita’s …”

  Archie had been jotting more notes, looked up. “Excellent!” he exclaimed, face pink with joy. “Now we’re thinking, we’re trying out conclusions.”

  “Way to go, Julia,” I said. She smiled. “As a matter of fact,” I went on, “I keep going back to something Father Boyle said … Let me see if I get it right now … It was something to the effect that Rita was somehow the woman that Maxvill had gotten entangled with up at the lodge. It wasn’t that he said it, I think he said something in the I-can’t-remember line, as if it weren’t important—he said she was a loose woman, morals in question, but there was a look on his face, a look that made me think he was implying that Maxvill was in fact screwing around with Rita … It’s just a feeling on my part but Boyle put it there, made me feel it.”

  “So they both evaporate without a trace,” Julia said, “and Father Boyle implies they were sexually involved … Now, that’s what I call food for thought. Which reminds me that I’m hungry—anybody for chicken sandwiches?”

  We trooped to the kitchen and sat around a butcher-block table eating sliced chicken, fresh bread, sweet pickles, potato salad, and cold baked beans, a feast, fueling us for the night. It was raining harder, splattering on the open windows’ screens. A cool breeze ruffled the kitchen curtains; coffee perked.

  “All right,” Archie said, munching steadily. “We’ll add that into our formula. Rita and Maxvill disappear, may have been lovers. Very nice, that, I like it. Opens up all sorts of avenues. As does the Running Buck-Billy Whitefoot connection. I mean, the connections are exquisite. Running Buck joined Rita the night she vanishes, Billy marries Rita’s niece … and Billy clams up on the subject of the disappearance. Hell, he must know something—he wasn’t deaf and Running Buck wasn’t mute. Chances are they talked about it. They must have. So why does Billy play dumb
?

  “Now, Paul, we’ve discussed the idea of the web of apparently unconnected human beings, with Miss Roderick or Mrs. Blankenship or whatever the devil she calls herself at the center. And it’s true, in a peculiar way, I admit, that everyone seems to have one kind of connection or another with her. But that seems to be stretching a point, the links are not strong, not emotionally compelling … And I rather doubt that this young woman is dashing about in the dark of night pushing people off skyscrapers and shooting old men at dinner! I doubt it.”

  “Well, obviously so do I,” I said. “But I was trying to describe a pattern. And she does seem to tie them all together … the only person who does …”

  “No,” Archie said, “There is someone else in the web, at another center or moving deliberately around the edge, stepping softly and carefully so as not to be trapped. And that person, whoever it is, has a motive for wanting Tim, Marty, and the victims-to-come dead. And that person is a murderer … And tonight, I daresay, we’re closer to the solution than we can possibly imagine.

  “And I would remind you of another triangle we must consider. The triangle of classical motivation. Money, jealousy, revenge. One of these, at least, I insist, comes into play. Think on’t.”

  We concluded the evening back in the study, where Archie rolled his schoolteacher’s blackboard into the space between his desk and the couch where Julia and I sat.

  The words went up on the blackboard, staccato, exact, like nails being whacked into a casket.

  A square with four sides: TIM, LARRY, KIM, BOYLE, but a question mark following Kim’s name and WHY? scrawled to the side.

  Then a web radiating out from Kim’s name in another diagram: LARRY, HARRIET DIERKER, TIM, RITA, TED, BILLY, OLE, HELGA, CROCKER, GOODE, BOYLE, DARWIN MCGILL, ANNE, PAUL, ARCHIE, MAXVILL … all caught in the web. I didn’t like that diagram. It was Kim’s web and that made no sense. She wasn’t controlling anyone.

  And a similar web but a nameless spider in the center. In this web: LARRY, TIM, BOYLE, OLE, GOODE, CROCKER, ARCHIE, RITA, and MAXVILL. They were all either dead, candidates for murder in Archie’s mind, or gone, lost, vanished. It was his general projection of what might be.

  Finally he wrote:

  STOLEN: LARRY’S EFFECTS, TIM’S SCRAPBOOK, CARVER’S NEWSPAPER FILE, ANYTHING OF BOYLE’S?

  DISAPPEARED: RITA AND CARVER

  WHY DOES MAXVILL SCARE THE LADS?

  AN AFFAIR: RITA AND CARVER?

  Covered in a rainbow of chalk dust, Archie stood away and stared at the list.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Somewhere in there, there ought to be an answer. The answer.” He grinned wryly and stroked his mustache, babying it, sneezed on the dust. “But it doesn’t just jump out at you, does it?”

  13

  I WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT Kim and methodically tried to put her out of my mind with the morning paper, breakfast, and a lukewarm shower. It didn’t work. So I reached past the orange juice, picked up the phone, and called the Chat and Chew Café in Grande Rouge. Jack was right on time; in my mind I could smell the bacon frying and see Jack wiping egg off his face.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, surprised, “hell, yes, I remember you. Was only a couple days ago … my memory ain’t gone yet, y’know.”

  “Well, Jack, your memory is what interests me.”

  “How’s that?” I could hear the burble of conversation in the background, Grande Rouge blinking its eyes, looking out at the timeless gray plane of the lake, getting it into gear for another day. I could almost smell the beginnings of autumn, the way it comes early to the north country. “What do you mean, my memory?”

  “I want to know when Rita Hook went away.”

  “I told you what I remember, Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  “No, that’s not enough. I need the date … the actual date she went out to the lodge with Running Buck.”

  “Well, jeez …”

  “You said your dad was the law up there then. Well, there’s got to be a record of it somewhere, in the police files or in the newspaper—a clipping, something. Or, hell, ask Ted, maybe he can remember. You can do it, Jack, and it’s important.”

  “Well, I’ll try,” he said, considering the challenge. “Okay? I’ll do what I can. You’re right, there’s got to be a record of it somewhere.” He paused and I heard him slurp coffee. “Say, did you go see Running Buck’s boy? Up to Jasper?”

  “Yes. Billy Whitefoot. It was a real help, Jack, that’s what made me think of you on this thing. I know you can do it.”

  “How soon you need to know?”

  “Today. Soon as you can. I’ll give you a buzz at lunchtime. Will you be at the café?”

  “You better believe it,” he said. “Hot roast beef sandwich, potatoes, and gravy today. I’ll be here. You call me. And keep your fingers crossed. I’m gettin’ on it right away.”

  My next call was to Mark Bernstein, who was sniffling and coughing.

  “What, what, what?” he snapped. He sneezed for emphasis, like Victor Borge’s old phonetic-pronunciation routine.

  “Two things,” I said.

  “Look, I’m busy, Paul,” he said wearily. “Really busy.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and yelled at somebody, came sniffling back to me. “What do you want?”

  “First, check on Martin Boyle’s photo album—”

  “His what?”

  “Photo album, snapshots—he showed it to me one night, it was in a bookcase or a sideboard, we looked at it on his dining table. He kept it in that room. See if it’s still there or if it was stolen—”

  “Like Dierker’s,” he said, a niggling tot of admiration in his voice. “Okay. Good idea. What’s number two?”

  “You had a disappearance here in Minneapolis about thirty years ago. Carver Maxvill, the incredible vanishing attorney. I want the date. Exact date … or when he was last seen. He was a member of the club—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I’ve got Missing Persons digging it out now. Look, why the hell do you want it? What are you doing?”

  “Ah, Archie wants it. I told him you’d know.”

  “You’re not getting into my area, are you, Paulie?”

  “Are you kidding? What do I know?”

  “Yeah, what do you know?” He let that one lie there for a moment, then his cold got to him. “Look, give me an hour on this, I’m going to get some antibiotics shoved up my ass and they should have it all sorted out by the time I get back. I’ll call you.” He hung up, coughing, worried.

  There was a difference between Bernstein’s way and mine. He had the resources to dig out the primary level of facts but he was limited by procedures. I was free to shuffle through the people, looking at each one for the crucial giveaway, the key to the next door. I knew that I’d have to sift through the jolly boys again and I wasn’t overly excited at the prospect, but I was warming to it. I wanted to know what was happening. I was intrigued by the puzzle aspect of it, which was typical of my bloodless nature, and Kim had given me a personal involvement. How did she finally fit into it? Where did it touch her … if it touched her at all?

  The morning was darkening, another ominous, oppressive day with clouds and the smell of rain. I gave in and called Kim’s apartment. She answered sleepily and I told her I had some bad news. She groaned. I pictured her in bed, rubbing her eyes, stretching her athlete’s body.

  “Father Boyle—another member of the club—they found him shot to death last night. At his home.” I explained the circumstances briefly.

  “Do they know why? I mean, was it something simple like robbery?” There wasn’t much hope in her voice.

  “No, they don’t know anything.”

  “Does Ole know yet?”

  “Bernstein said he’d be talking to all of them, in the way of a warning, I suppose. He’ll probably question them all again. Pretty closely, I imagine.”

  “My God,” she sighed. “When did it happen? Last night?”

  “No, they think a day or two b
efore. He just sat there dead on his patio for a while. Nobody noticed.”

  “Well, I’d better get hold of Ole. He may want to talk about it.” She paused. “But I don’t see why it has to be connected with the club, do you? I mean, there may be some other rationale behind it … maybe Boyle and Tim Dierker were involved in something else that led to this. I don’t know.” We chatted aimlessly for a few minutes, then I asked her something personal.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Billy was up in Jasper?”

  For a moment I thought the line had gone dead.

  “What business is that of yours?” She’d hit the switch again; life and warmth had ebbed out of her voice in seconds.

  “I don’t know. I just thought you might have mentioned it. I got a tip that he was up in Jasper and I went up to see him—”

  “About me?” She was controlling her anger again, rigid. I knew her mouth was tightening.

  “No, not at all.” I wished I hadn’t brought it up; her reaction made me realize how much I wanted her liking and approval. Affection, that too. “But, you see, his … guardian, I guess you’d call him—Running Buck—took Billy out there, to the lodge, to do odd jobs and whatnot, he’d met those people, I thought he might be able to remember something about them … About either Maxvill or your aunt’s disappearance. You’d have saved me from relying on pure chance if you’d just told me what you knew about him, where he was—”

  “I’ve told you I want you to stop this,” she snapped. “I’ve taken you into my confidence, I’ve told you more about myself than … well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to discuss it with you anymore.”

  “Kim, listen to me. I care about you. I’ve shared things with you, it hasn’t been a one-way deal. I’m not investigating your life, not anymore, even if that’s how I started out … I’m trying to find out who’s murdering these people, how it’s tied to the club and my father and the rest of them.” I heard her breathing. I had to convince her. I couldn’t lose her now and I knew how she was, that she could for whatever reasons inside her psyche be gone in an instant, irrevocably gone. “Try to understand me, what I’m after. It’s not you I’m digging at … I want you in my life, Kim. I want to be in yours. Trust me.”