Badge of Evil

by Whit Masterson

  At both ends of the cove, a split rail fence had been constructed, leading from the cliffs to the water’s edge. It was intended as a boundary marker only since, as the cop had stated, it was too low to prevent intruders. And at the northern boundary, where the fence joined the sandstone, sat a woman, her back against the final post. She had been staring at him but when she saw that she had been discovered she turned her face quickly away.

  Curious, Holt tramped across the sand toward her but she did not look at him again nor did she reply to his hail. She sat on the sand but she was not dressed for swimming; instead, she wore street clothes, all black. This, plus the fact she was young, not over thirty, made Holt fairly certain of her identity. He stopped a few feet away and repeated, “Hi, there.”

  The woman didn’t give any indication she was aware of his approach. Holt said pleasantly, “Hello; I’m Mitchell Holt from the district attorney’s office. I didn’t see you sitting here at first. You must be Miss Linneker.”

  She looked at him then but without any welcome in her gaze. “Yes. What do you want?”

  “Nothing, really. I’ve been assigned to work on — well, to help get to the bottom of things and I thought I’d better look around.”

  “All right,” Tara Linneker said indifferently. “I suppose it’s your job.” She was a big girl, even sitting down, large-boned and heavy. Her face was set in sullen lines with nothing particularly pretty or distinctive about the features. Tara Linneker didn’t fit the romantic conception of the young heiress. Even her clothes, a black wool suit, seemed dowdy and ill-fitting.

  “I’m just trying to get the feel of things. I didn’t intend to intrude.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I was just sitting and thinking.” She added, “I don’t intend to tell you anything, though.”

  “Oh?” Holt kept his voice pleasant. “That’s a rather odd thing to say.”

  “Well, I know what you people think. You think that Del and I were the ones who did this to Father. You want to trap me.”

  “Miss Linneker, I didn’t even know you were here. But since you are here, I would like to get acquainted.”

  “You can talk to my lawyer if you want to talk to someone. Mr. Wahl in the First National Bank building.”

  Holt sat down cross-legged on the sand. He said, “Well, I don’t know that I have anything to talk about with your lawyer. You’re not charged with anything that I know of. All I’m concerned with is seeing that whoever murdered your father pays for it. I imagine you feel the same way.”

  He paused and Tara, after a moment, said, “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Now, you certainly don’t have to talk with me or anyone else about it, but I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t as long as we’re honest with each other.”

  “I suppose so.” After her first flash of hostility, Tara hadn’t raised her voice much above a murmur. She seemed sunk in apathy, apparently her form of grief. But Holt couldn’t help viewing Tara through the glass of McCoy’s suspicions, and so he wondered. Sometimes the realization of guilt had the same numbing effect as sorrow. And the way Tara sat there, dry-eyed and brooding on the little beach where her father had died, had something almost ghoulish about it. He asked, “How long have you been sitting here, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I lost track. It doesn’t make any difference, anyway.”

  “People might be worried about you.”

  “Who, pray tell?” Tara gave a short and mirthless laugh. “The police, you mean?”

  “I was thinking of your young man. Shayon.”

  “He doesn’t care. Del hasn’t even called me.” She looked quickly at the remains of the cabana and then away. “I don’t blame him. I understand. I got him into this.”

  “Into what?” Holt probed gently.

  “Into this awful mess. All the trouble, the wrangling with Father. Those horrible things he said to him. And now this.” She gestured around vaguely and then looked at Holt. “Why do you think that Del and I killed my father, Mr. Holt?”

  “I didn’t say I did.”

  “No, you didn’t say it. But you think we did, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “Let’s say that two million dollars is a pretty good motive.”

  “Two million dollars,” Tara repeated with soft scorn. “Yes. I suppose that people who have never had the money would think that would be a motive, all right. I despise people.”

  “I hope that’s not true,” Holt said. “Because, ultimately, you may have to depend on people for your life, Miss Linneker.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to talk to you. Go away and leave me alone.”

  “I’d like you to answer one question before I go. You mentioned Shayon wrangling with your father. Would that have been about two months ago — about the first of December? Is that when the trouble began?”

  Tara hesitated and then said, “Of course not. Father didn’t approve of my — of Del and me, but there wasn’t any trouble. On December first or any other time. Now I wish you’d go away.”

  Holt rose and brushed off his trousers. “It’ll be dark soon. I’d be glad to walk you back to the house.”

  Tara turned her head away from him and didn’t reply. After a moment, Holt said a polite goodbye and trudged back across the sand to the stairs. He ascended them slowly, grateful to escape the grisly aroma of the little cove. He looked back once, but Tara was not watching him. Instead, she gazed out across the water at the lumber yard on the far shore, now solely hers. Holt wondered at her thoughts. Grief? Despair? Or something else?

  The rain still hadn’t developed into anything significant, which might be an omen or might not. He didn’t know quite what to make of the sullen brooding girl. She had decided to lie to him about the December first date; he was sure of that. How much of the rest of her story was false? All of it? Holt found himself feeling sorry for her, guilty or not. Then he sighed. Tara didn’t seem to care one way or another, so why should he?

  The cop was squatting under a palm tree, smoking a damp cigarette. “See everything?” he asked as Holt passed.

  “No,” said Holt truthfully. “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT was already quitting time so Holt didn’t bother to go back to his office. But on his way home, he detoured to stop by the little restaurant across from the Civic Centre. Van Dusen was sitting at the bar, having his usual supper, a martini and a shrimp cocktail.

  Van Dusen had a first name but no one remembered it except the clerk who made out the pay cheques. He was chief investigator for the district attorney’s office, a chubby bachelor of forty-plus with a horseshoe of curly brown hair encircling his otherwise naked scalp. He gave the impression of being just a good-natured nonentity but Holt knew better. Van Dusen had held his job through three different administrations simply because he came close to being an indispensable man.

  Van Dusen kicked out the adjoining stool so Holt could join him. “Out celebrating the Buccio case, Mitch? Pull up a chair.”

  “Haven’t got time, Van. I was hoping I’d catch you. The chief talk to you?”

  “Two-Gun? No — should he have?”

  “We’ve got the Linneker murder in our lap.” Van Dusen grimaced. “I know — I feel the same way. But we’re going to have to give it the old college try if only to keep Adair happy.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me about it.”

  “Let’s make it coffee tomorrow morning. Right now I’ve got to get home and tell Connie our vacation is off again.”

  “I forgot you were a poor married man,” said Van Dusen, grinning. “Okay — in the morning, then. If you don’t show up, I’ll check the hospitals.”

  Holt snorted. “Don’t give me that bachelor logic,” he said. “You’ve been watching too much television. I don’t know a single husband who’s honestly scared of his wife.”

  He was still chuckling over Van Dusen’s defensive views of marital disaster when he arrived home and drove into his garage. His wife was
sitting cross legged on top of his workbench, a rifle in her lap. He couldn’t help a swift recollection of Van Dusen’s forecast. “Hi, hon. What’s with the gun?”

  Connie Holt came forward to receive his kiss, still holding the rifle. “I thought I’d surprise you and have the rifles all cleaned so you wouldn’t have to do it.” She raised her eyebrows at his laugh. “What’s so funny, Mitch?”

  “A crazy thought I had. Tell you about it later.”

  “Where’s your brief case? I’ve looked forward all day to seeing it empty for once.” She was talking vacation already.

  “I’ll tell you about that later, too. What’s for dinner?”

  “Food. I can be mysterious, too.” She waited in the breezeway that connected house to garage while he lowered the big overhead door and then they entered the kitchen together. In the dining room beyond Holt could see that the table had been set in more festive style than usual. Connie followed his glance. “We’re celebrating our getaway.”

  “Looks nice,” said Holt noncommittally.

  From the living room came the din of a television set. Connie raised her voice above the racket to call, “Nancy! Daddy’s home!”

  Immediately there was a clatter of feet and their daughter burst into the kitchen crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” She was a gawky seven year old, thin like her father. She threw her arms about Holt’s waist, hugging him fiercely. He ruffled her black hair and then, the extravagant greeting concluded, Nancy rushed back to the television where, to judge by the uproar, great excitement was happening.

  “How can a mere father hope to compete with Howdy Doody?” Holt asked.

  “You’re lucky. The only time I can get her to do anything is during the commercials.” Connie peered into various pots and pans on the stove. “Sit down and talk to me, Mitch. I made a drink for you. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  He got it and perched on the kitchen stool, watching her as she fussed with the food and thinking that he was lucky’ to have such a handsome wife. Even after nine years of marriage, he had never quite gotten over his surprise that he should have snatched such a prize. And against heavy odds, too, considering the difference in their backgrounds. Connie Holt was as American-sounding a name as one could imagine, but she had once been Consuelo Mayatorena and her great-great-great-great something or other had come to the New World with Cortes. Consuelo Mayatorena was a full-blooded Mexican, the daughter of a proud and ancient family which had once owned, by kingly grant, most of Lower California. They still owned as much of it as anyone needed these days, a many-thousand-acre ranch south of Ensenada. As this generation’s only daughter, Consuelo could have had her pick of a hundred equally wealthy young men. But she had chosen instead to become Connie Holt, American housewife and mother, and if she had ever regretted her decision she had never indicated it.

  They had met at the annual Black & White Ball at Ensenada, when Connie — Consuelo, then — was only eighteen, in the first gorgeous bloom of maturity. She was still as slender as when they were married, her complexion as flawless, her figure — even in the slacks and sloppy sweater she wore tonight — as inviting. She was so completely Americanized that Holt seldom thought of her as ever being anything else, except on those rare occasions when anger caused her dark eyes, under heavy brows, to flash and her gestures to become peculiarly Latin. Like many other Mexican daughters whose families could afford it, Connie had been educated in American schools and she spoke better English than her husband.

  “Bring your drink into the bedroom and talk to me while I change,” she told him. “I want to get into the party mood and perhaps I can fool you into thinking I’m still a glamorous creature.”

  He made the appropriate reply to that and sat on the edge of their double bed while Connie rummaged for more feminine garb. But he could not summon up the gay conversation she commanded and she noticed and asked him why. He told her the bad news. Connie took it as he had expected, disappointed but resigned, and Holt thought how different such moments were in actuality from the fictions most people seemed to believe. “Well,” she sighed, “I wish I hadn’t spent all that time polishing the good silver. It’s just another night, after all.”

  “We can still have our little party, just the three of us.” He grimaced. “There’s no reason that this has to upset all our plans.”

  “That’s right.” Connie matched his air of forced gaiety. “To heck with everybody. You’re not working now and you’re mine — for tonight, anyway.”

  “Right. We’ll have dinner, put some records on and spend the evening pretending we’re independently wealthy and don’t have to work for the public.”

  They went at it determinedly but it didn’t fool anybody except their daughter, who enjoyed parties of any description. Despite the “company” silver and the special dishes and the candlelight, it was — as Connie had predicted — just another night. And the hollowness of the celebration was emphasized after dinner when Connie telephoned her father in Ensenada to tell him that they wouldn’t be coming, after all. The conversation, in rapid-fire Spanish, was beyond Holt’s elementary grasp of the language, but enough American phrases were sprinkled in so that he could follow the sense of it. He admired the way Connie could shift lingual gears, sometimes in mid-sentence, going from one tongue to the other and back again without even a pause. He realized that Connie was telling her father not to expect them anytime in the near future. Afterwards, he challenged this.

  “There’s no use kidding ourselves,” his wife told him. “I know what happens when you get on a case.”

  “This isn’t the ordinary case. I’m just window dressing this time. McCoy and Quinlan will probably wrap it up in a day.” He related the way things stood, emphasizing the open-and-shut aspects as they had been told to him by the two detectives. “So you can see there’s no real problem to it.”

  To his surprise, Connie shook her head calmly. “It’s not that simple, Mitch. That isn’t the way it happened. Those two kids — Tara and her sweetheart — didn’t kill her father. I’ve read all about it in the paper.”

  He couldn’t help laughing. “Oh, come on now, Connie. The newspapers don’t know anything about it. I’ll back McCoy’s experience any day.”

  “Anybody can make a mistake. For goodness’ sake, it’s a matter of common sense. Things just don’t happen that way. Girls fall in love every day with men their parents don’t approve of, and marry them, too, without the approval. They don’t have to kill their father to do it, not in this day and age. McCoy’s talking like this is the Middle Ages or something.”

  “You can’t generalize about people.”

  “That’s what McCoy and Quinlan and you are doing, isn’t it? How about me, as a good example? Papa didn’t exactly do handsprings when I decided to marry you. In fact, I remember practically being told never to darken his door again.” Connie grinned. “Of course, now he thinks that you’re too good for me. He asked me again tonight if I’d managed to fatten you up any.”

  “Did Papa Grande say anything about my pony?” asked Nancy eagerly.

  “Your pony will be there when we are,” Connie told her. “And now, young lady, it’s past your bedtime.” This produced the usual argument that ended in the usual way and after Nancy had reluctantly marched off, Connie returned to the larger argument with her husband. “I married you, Mitch, and I didn’t kill anybody to do it — and I’m supposed to be the hot-blooded Latin type.”

  “There’s a difference. Tara Linneker stood to inherit two million bucks.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous. A girl in love doesn’t even think about money. I didn’t, and Papa isn’t the poorest man in the world. Is Tara Linneker so different? You’ve met her.”

  “I don’t say Tara planned this thing. She probably didn’t. But this Shayon character could have. Having no money of his own, he probably had an eye on the main chance — ”

  “Like you, you mean?” Connie saw that he was annoyed and she shrugged. “Just tell me to shut up, Mitch, and I
will. But it seems to me that McCoy and Quinlan are looking for an easy answer and you’re going right along with them. You haven’t even met Shayon and already you’ve got him pigeonholed.”

  “All right,” he said edgily. “McCoy and Quinlan have only been doing this sort of work for twenty, thirty years, but that doesn’t mean they know anything about it. I’m a fool for even listening to them instead of you.”

  “No, I think you’re just anxious to get rid of the whole thing so you won’t have to disappoint Nancy and me about our vacation.” Connie rose. “I’m the fool for talking about business on our party night. You relax while I see what’s taking Her Highness so long in the bathroom.”

  Holt tried but he couldn’t quite relax. The truth of what Connie had said — that he was eager to accept the easy explanation and get on with his personal affairs — stayed with him. He couldn’t agree with his wife regarding the innocence of the young lovers. McCoy and Quinlan knew their business too well for him to shrug off their conclusions simply because of Connie’s intuitions. And yet, wasn’t intuition what was guiding McCoy also? McCoy’s intuitions were based on experience while Connie’s sprang from feminine sensitivity — which should weight the scales in the policeman’s favour. But Holt had most husband’s uneasy respect for the mysterious workings of the wifely mind. And Connie had certainly tagged him on one count : he had already cast Delmont Shayon in the villain’s role without ever seeing more than the young man’s photograph. That didn’t speak well for his legal training, to say the least.

  Holt came to a sudden conclusion and sought out the telephone directory. Shayon’s address was located on the other side of town, a twenty-minute drive. He dialled the number. The phone rang for so long that Holt was on the point of hanging up when a man finally answered. “Yes, this is Shayon speaking.” He had a smooth, almost silky voice, like an actor. But he wasn’t an actor. Shayon lost his composure too quickly when Holt identified himself. “What do you want, anyway?”