by John Dunning
A sleek-looking jet nosed its way around the corner and came toward us. “Well, what do you think?” Trish asked. I told her I tried not to think, I just react, and Bowman laughed when she did not. She was letting me call the plays, at least for now. It had been my decision to get on Scofield’s tail as soon as he touched down at Sea-Tac; I just wasn’t comfortable waiting around for him to show up at the Four Seasons. When you’re dealing with a fruitcake like Pruitt, a lot can happen in ten miles.
The plane taxied in and came to a stop. The ground crew rolled out a steel stairwell, a door opened, and a man got out and popped open an umbrella. Then Rodney Scofield stepped out in the rain. I didn’t need a formal introduction: he was an old man whose snowy hair curled in tufts under the edges of his hat, whose ruddy face—as near as I could tell from that distance—was all business. This was his clambake, he was the boss. The grunt beside him held the umbrella over his head, and the two grunts in the Caddy got out and stood at attention. He was at the bottom of the stairs when Leith Kenney emerged from the aircraft. Kenney looked just as I’d pictured him, which doesn’t happen often when all you have is a voice to go by. He had a neatly trimmed beard: he was slender and tall and had the word bookman stamped all over him. He was carrying a small suitcase, which he looked ready to defend with his life. He reminded me of a diplomatic courier in wartime, transporting top secrets with the valise chained to his wrist. But I was willing to bet that this suitcase contained nothing but money.
Here we go, I thought.
We went south, a surprise. I was happy to have done something right for a change and picked up Scofield at the airport. The Cadillac whipped into 1-5 and headed for Tacoma like a homing pigeon. Bowman followed without question: Trish would owe him a big-league debt when it was over. The Caddy cruised at the speed limit and Bowman kept our truck two or three cars behind it. We didn’t talk: just sat rigid, tense in the seat. After eight or ten miles, the Cadillac turned off the highway and took to a two-lane, state-numbered road. Bowman dropped back but kept him-in sight, cruising along at forty.
The rain had stopped and the sky was breaking up into long streaks of blue. A stiff wind blew down from Rainier, buffeting the truck as we rocked along. I thought we must be due east of Tacoma now, skirting the city on Highway 161. It was small-town suburban, broken by stretches of open country. Snow blew off the mountain in the distance, a swirling gale driven by the same wind that rolled down the valley. We came to a river, crossed it, and arrived in the town of Puyallup.
The Cadillac stopped. Pulled off to the side of the road.
We drove on past and I got a glimpse of Scofield and Kenney confering over something in the backseat.
“They’re looking at directions,” Trish said. ‘’ Double-checking.‘’
“Then we’re almost there.”
Bowman hung a left, did a quick U-turn, and came cautiously to the corner. We could see the Cadillac still parked off the road in the distance. We sat at roadside and waited.
They came a minute later. Bowman allowed just the right gap to develop, then swung in behind them. I wasn’t too worried: none of the guys in the Caddy looked like pros to me, meaning the only way they’d make us was by accident. The Caddy hung a right, into a road that ran along the river. The place they were going was about half a mile along, a small cafe well back from the road. There was a gas pump out front and a couple of junk autos at the east side of the building. The yard was unpaved, puddle-pocked from all the rain. “Pull in,” I said, and Bowman did, taking a position between cars on the far end. Scofield and Kenney got out and went in, leaving the two grunts alone in the car.
“Well,” I said. “Looks like we fish or cut bait.”
“Let me go in,” Trish said. “At least if Pruitt’s in there he won’t know me on sight.”
“Okay, but do it quick. Get us three coffees to go, then get back out here and tell me what’s going on.”
She clutched her raincoat and struggled through the wind to the front door. I got back in the truck and waited. Bowman didn’t say anything, and in a minute I forgot he was there. I thought about Pruitt and Grayson, and about the blind woman in Baltimore. And I was suddenly very nervous.
One of Scofield’s grunts got out of the Caddy and tried valiantly to light a cigarette. No smoking allowed in the old man’s car, I thought. But the wind was fierce and at last he had to give it up.
The cafe got busy. It was a workingman’s joint, the customers coming and going in blue jeans and flannel. The slots in front of the building were now filled in with cars, and another row had begun out near the road behind us. A young couple brushed past, then two farmers, then a guy in coveralls who looked like the town grease monkey. They all converged at the front door, just as the door swung open and Trish came out.
She stepped aside, clutching a brown paper bag against her breast. I got out and let her into the truck and she gave me the news. Our friends had taken a booth at the far end of the dining room and were sitting there alone, waiting.
Trish gave out the coffees. “Hope you don’t have to be anywhere,” she said by way of apology to Bowman. He just grinned, well aware of the points he was piling up with her, and said his time was her time. He’d need to call in at nine and make sure a few things got done: other than that, he was all hers. More people came and went, old men in twos and threes mixed with the occasional loner. They would fill up the tables in a corner, eat their soft-boiled eggs and gripe as old men in small towns have always done about the thieves and sons of bitches running things in Washington. I could fit right in if they’d let me: a helluva lot better that would be than sitting out here like three bumps on a log. This was a difficult place for a stakeout. But you’d be much too conspicuous out on the road, so you took what the situation gave you and hoped you blended in. I hunched down in the seat till my eyes were level with the dash. I could still see everything that went on at the front door.
Bowman and Trish were talking shop again. I listened but did not hear. Then we all settled into that quiet restlessness that always seems to come in the second hour. I replayed the case in my head, trying to remember everything from the top. Slater walked into my store and we did our little macho dance. I crossed swords with Pruitt, came to know Eleanor and the Rigbys, absorbed the legend of the Graysons, met Huggins and Amy Harper. But through it all I kept thinking about a woman I had never met and probably never would, a blind woman who had gone crazy in Baltimore.
I got my chance at her when Bowman went to make his phone call. “The guy in Baltimore,” I said. “When he called you back, did he say anything about the particulars of that particular case?”
“He read me some stuff from the clips. I made some notes.” She opened her purse and got out her steno pad. “I spent more time with him than the others because of the blind woman.”
“Yeah, the blind woman.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know yet. Go on with what he told you.”
“The victim’s name was Allingham. He lived with his wife on the outskirts of Baltimore, a suburb called Ellicott City. Nice house, secluded neighborhood, well-to-do people in their midfifties.”
“And the wife survived.”
“Not only survived, she seemed to’ve been deliberately left alone. He came into the room with her. She could hear him breathing.”
“ Him …did she say it was a him?”
“That’s how the clips had it. He came in… he stood there breathing hard. She knew what was happening, too: knew they had an intruder and he had just killed or seriously hurt her husband. Blind people see better than we think.”
“What else?”
She flipped a page. I looked at her notes and saw a cryptic brand of shorthand, probably something of her own making that was unreadable to the rest of the world. “Her name was Elizabeth. She was never a credible witness. She just sank into darkness after that. But who could blame her?”
I closed my eyes and tried to see it. Irish sa
id, “The cops thought it might’ve been her dog that saved her. She had this German shepherd Seeing Eye dog, very protective. They say the dog raised hell when the cops arrived. They had to bring in a dog man to muzzle him before they could interview the widow.”
“I don’t think the dog had anything to do with it.”
“How so?”
“Dogs don’t usually discourage that kind of killer, at least not for long. If he’d wanted her, he’d go through the dog to get her.”
“Maybe the noise scared him off.”
“Maybe. And I can’t help wondering how she could hear the killer breathing if the dog was barking.”
“Who knows what she really heard? But look, are you going somewhere with this?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s just nagging at me. Did any of your news guys mention ashes at the scene?”
“No, but that wouldn’t be in the clips. The cops never…”
“But you did say the house in New Orleans was torched and burned.”
“Yeah, the cops there thought it was done to cover up the murder.”
“They may’ve told the press that, but I’ll bet there were some cops down there who didn’t believe it.”
“What’re you thinking?” she asked again.
“Might’ve been somebody burning a book. He left it burning and the fire spread and burned the house.”
Bowman had come out of the restaurant, standing off to one side to grab a smoke. I looked at Trish and the question that had nagged at me all morning bubbled up and out.
“Why would he leave the blind woman alive?”
“You tell me.”
“Because of her blindness. That’s the one thing all the others had in common that made her different. They could see.”
“He knew she couldn’t see him. Couldn’t identify him.”
“That’s the logical answer. But this bird wasn’t thinking logically. And I can think of another possibility.”
She shook her head. “I must be dense.”
“There was something in the book. Something they could see and she couldn’t. Something that had been put in or bound in by mistake. Something so awful in the killer’s mind that it had to be retrieved, and anybody who had seen it killed.”
“I don’t know, Janeway.”
“I don’t know either. I’m just doing what cops always do in murder cases, I’m playing it through in my head. Maybe he never intended to kill anybody. But he went to St. Louis to get his book back, and Hockman wouldn’t play. Now we get into the collector’s mentality. Hockman suddenly knew he had something unique. He wasn’t about to give it up, not for Jesus Christ, not for Daryl Grayson himself. The only way to get it from him was to kill him.”
“Keep going,” she said, but her voice was still laced with doubt.
“The killer was single-minded, you figured that out yourself. He flew from A to B , and so on. He had one thing on his mind, getting that book. There was a desperate urgency to it, the cause transcended geography, transcended everything: he couldn’t think about anything else. So he gets to St. Louis and Hockman won’t give it to him. He whacks Hockman, maybe in a fit of rage. Now he’s a killer.”
I let that thought settle on her for a few seconds.
“Let me tell you something about killers, Trish…something you might know but never thought about. There are people who never kill till they’re forty, fifty, then they kill a dozen times. That first one pushes them over the edge, sets them on a dark path they never intended to travel. The first one’s the catalyst: there’s no question after that. He goes to Phoenix and this time he doesn’t even ask. He wades in, kills the people, takes the book. And so it goes.”
“Until he gets to Baltimore…”
“And he walks into the room and there’s this woman, obviously blind, with a dog and all, maybe a cane leaning against a table. She’s blind, she didn’t see anything, she’s not part of this. He leaves her alive.”
“But who’d go to such a length? Who’d do something like that?”
“Only one guy I can think of. The guy who made it.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Jesus, Janeway, what’re you thinking?” she asked for the third time, her voice now an urgent whisper.
“Did you ever talk to the coroner who did the Graysons?”
“No,” she said in a tiny voice. “There was never a reason.”
“There was never any doubt that it was really Darryl and Richard Grayson who died in that fire?”
She never got to answer because Bowman came back and got in beside us. We sat in the car, still as death, thinking about it.
All this time we’ve had the wrong motive, I was thinking. We’ve been thinking money, but that was never it. All the specter of money had done was cloud it. Only after Scofield had begun to collect Grayson and the books had become so avidly sought and eagerly paid for did money become a credible possibility. But this case had begun long before that.
The clock pushed ten: the breakfast rush was over. Scofield and Kenney had been inside more than two hours.
“They must be getting discouraged by now,” I said.
It was on that weary note that Pruitt arrived.
45
He was the invisible man, leaving footprints in the snow. Watch out for old ladies , Slater had said, but you still couldn’t see him except that he was carrying Scofield’s suitcase. The suitcase was like the snow in that old horror film: it lit him up, made his tracks visible so you could pop him as he ran across the yard. It danced of its own volition, as if the arm clutching it against the gingham dress had vanished. He had tried to cover it with a shawl, which was too small. I sat up straight in the seat, so suddenly that Trish jumped up with a jerk of her own. “What’s going on?” she said, but I was already out of the truck, splashing after the hooded squaw who moved between cars and headed across the muddy yard twenty yards to our right. He looked like old Mother Bates in Psycho , walking with the sure and deadly gait of a man. I fell in behind him and we headed out toward the row of cars parked by the road. The wind whipped at his shawl and clutched the corners of his hood. I got a glimpse of cheek as he half-turned and tried to look back. But he didn’t turn far enough: he was caught in the Satchel Paige syndrome, afraid to look, afraid to see how much trouble followed him. If he could make it to his car without having to look upon his enemy, he’d be home free.
He didn’t make it.
“Pruitt,” I said, and he spun on his heel and locked in my eyes from a distance of six feet.
His free hand slipped down into the folds of his dress. I danced in close and grabbed him. With the other hand I ripped away the suitcase and made him fumble it. It popped open on the ground and the wind sucked up the money, a fluttery gale of greenbacks that blew back across the yard toward the cafe. He cried out and tried to dive down and save it. I met him coming down with a knee to the jaw, flopping him back on his ass in the mud.
It was all fast motion and unreal after that. I stood over him and said, “Take out that gun and I’ll kick your head off,” but I knew that wouldn’t stop him. He cleared the dress with a handful of iron and I drove my shoe under his armpit. He grabbed at the sky, fired a round in the air, and I nailed him hard with the other foot. He withered, twisting in agony like a deflating balloon, rolling under the wheels with a gaffing, hissing sound. I kicked his gun and it spun off into a puddle. I knew I had hurt him, maybe busted his ribs, but he wasn’t finished yet. He still had the knife, and as I dragged him out, he rolled into me with the blade leading the way. I caught his wrist with a wet smack. For a few seconds we strained against each other while the point of the knife quivered like a seismograph that couldn’t tell if an earthquake was coming. Then I knew I had him. I saw it first in his eyes, that chink in the hard shell that comes to all bullyboys when they play one hand too many. He didn’t look mean anymore. He looked small and tired and astonished.
“Now you are going to tell me where the girl is.” I said this with the knife at my throat but
the tide turning fast. His arm collapsed and he let the knife fall away as if surrender could save him. I hit him hard with my fist so he’d know better, and I hit him again, then again, then I lost track as I battered his face back and forth. I could hear my voice pounding at him as well, “Where is she…where is she,” with every punch, and after a while he stopped saying he didn’t know. I felt Trish on my back, heard her screaming at me to for Christ’s sake stop it, but for that long minute stopping was just not possible. I had slipped over the edge and become every bad cop who ever took up a rubber hose or swung a billy club in anger.
Trish grabbed me around the neck. I shrugged her off and went at Pruitt again.
Then I did stop. I lunged at him one more time, a reflex, but I pulled back without letting that last fist fall. I looked at him, bloody and cold, and I knew he wouldn’t be telling anybody anything for a while.
I got up and looked around. Trish was sitting in mud ten feet away. Bowman was standing far back, watching as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Farther back, people were running out of the diner as word spread that hundred-dollar bills were falling out of the sky.
In the babble of the crowd I heard the word police . I had a few minutes on the long end to do what I had to do and get out of there.
I dragged Pruitt around the car, took out Slater’s handcuffs, and locked him to the door handle. I didn’t see Irish when I looked for her again: I didn’t know where she’d gone, but Bowman was still there. I went over to him and said, “Gimme the truck keys, Mickey,” and he looked at me as if I was not a guy to argue with and he gave me the keys. I handed him the keys to the cuffs and told him to give them to Trish.
I headed toward the cafe. The crowd at the door pushed back and gave me a wide berth.
I heard voices as I moved through. Again the word police . Somebody else said they were on the way. A woman asked what the hell was going on and a man said, “Some crazy guy beat up an old lady in the parking lot.”
