Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  “I told you I never saw the killer.”

  “You told me a lot of things. You set it up for Kendrick—you made the deal with Joe, you gave Joe to Kendrick to be the patsy who’d take the rap for him. There’s no way for you to slide out of it. You’re an accessory.”

  Kendrick said, “He’s only an accessory if you can prove anything against me, and you can’t.”

  It was a shrewd remark: it reminded Rand that to speak now would be to dig his own grave. What Watchman had to do was find a way to shatter that silence.

  Watchman spoke not to Kendrick but to Rand; it was Rand, of the two, who had less to lose. “The tribe had a stronger case than yours. If you went into court over those water rights you were bound to lose. Hell every water-rights lawyer with a shingle to hang out knows the Winters-versus-U.S. case, it’s broken all these private water deals down and it’ll break yours down just as fast if you ever get hauled into court. You didn’t want to go into court. You didn’t want your wells closed down. So you did a deal with Kendrick. You kept him out of prison and he kept you out of court.”

  Victorio walked in during Watchman’s speech and when Watchman paused he caught Victorio’s eye. Victorio said, “What the hell is this?”

  Kendrick said, “They pretend they’ve got some reason to arrest me for murder. Four murders, the man says.”

  “What?”

  Kendrick leaned forward and stared at him. “Did you rifle my files, Tom?”

  Watchman spoke quickly. “Don’t give him the satisfaction, Tom.”

  Victorio said, “What files?”

  Kendrick half-shuttered his eyes and sat back again.

  Victorio made an interrogatory throat-clearing sound but Watchman waved him back. He turned to Kendrick. “It’s been six years since you killed Calisher. The water case still hasn’t come to court. You must have pulled every delaying tactic in the book. Not Rand’s lawyers—you. And when you ran out of legal delays you stole your own files to set the case back another year.”

  Victorio’s head rocked back. “Ah,” he breathed. “Yeah. Of course. Jesus Christ. Him!”

  Watchman glanced at him. “You can confirm that part of it—the unnecessary delays Kendrick kept making.”

  “You bet your ass I can.”

  Kendrick said, “Tom, you’re jumping in before you find out if there’s any water in the pool. You’re in a lot of trouble with me as of right now.”

  Watchman got the ball back. “You ran out of delays and you couldn’t afford to take the Indians’ case into court—because you knew you’d win.”

  Rand made a sound. He was thinking about inveighing. Watchman’s angry eyes pinned him back. “He couldn’t afford to win it, could he Mr. Rand. Because if you lost it you’d throw him out in the cold to stand trial for murder.”

  “You’re talking yourself into the goddamnedest slander suit that’s ever been brought in the state of Arizona,” Kendrick said. “Go right ahead, Trooper—finish digging your grave.”

  “Not my grave. Yours.” Watchman went back to Rand: “It had to be like that. You forced him to keep the case out of court. And that’s why I know you’ve got the evidence to prove he killed Calisher.”

  7.

  Kendrick attempted to laugh but he didn’t bring it off. And the false smile slid from his face when Rand suddenly stood up.

  Rand said, “Let’s go outside. I want to talk to you.” He was talking to Watchman and Watchman nodded and turned to go with him but Kendrick bounced to his feet and bellowed. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Rand sounded weary. “Shut up, Dwight. Come on”—the last to Watchman.

  Victorio said, “Use my office.”

  Watchman followed Rand into it. The cluttered cubicle was hardly big enough for the two of them.

  Rand didn’t sit down. He leaned his shoulder against a bookshelf. His face was not readable. “I want to know how much you’ve got.”

  “That’s better. You don’t——”

  “I’m not admitting a damn thing, Trooper. Not now. Put your cards on the table face up and we’ll see how good your hand is. Then I’ll decide.”

  “Fair enough.” It was as good as Watchman was going to get; it was a little better, in fact, than he had expected. It could save a lot of time.

  He said, “Here’s what happened. Kendrick got desperate, he didn’t have any delays left in his pocket. He knew the tribal beliefs about witchcraft and he set it up to look as if Maria Threepersons had been witched. Last Monday morning he borrowed Victorio’s Volkswagen—Victorio knew it but at the moment he’s not admitting it. He will. Kendrick drove down to Maria’s house in Phoenix, in Victorio’s car. A witness saw that car drive away from her house. It ran the red light at the corner. You told me yourself that he’s color-blind, he tends to run red lights when he’s upset. You telling me about that dog he killed—that’s what made me see how it was.”

  “You’re saying he killed the woman in cold blood.”

  “Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. He probably took the powder out of some capsules and dropped it in her coffee. It wasn’t supposed to be enough to kill her—just enough to make her damned sick. He didn’t count on her getting in the car and passing out at the wheel and driving head-on, into a truck. How could he? He didn’t intend that, he only meant for her to get sick. Then he planned to send Jimmy Oto down to the prison to convince Joe that somebody was witching Maria. Then Jimmy was supposed to help Joe break out. Kendrick planted an idea in Joe’s head that Harlan Natagee had witched her and Harlan was working for you. The whole idea was to get Joe mad enough to kill you.”

  “Nobody’s that devious,” Rand said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s not far-fetched. Kendrick wanted Joe to kill you because it would solve all his problems at once. It would get you off his back and he’d be free to go ahead into court and win the water case. And it would destroy whatever credibility Joe had left as a witness against him. Look at it—if Joe kills you, who’s going to believe him when he says he never killed Calisher?”

  “I guess that makes a kind of sense,” Rand said, bemused. “I mean it’s one way to look at things, isn’t it. But all this sly business about dragging Harlan Natagee’s name into it and persuading the kid that Harlan was working for me—that just doesn’t follow.”

  “It does. Because Kendrick had to cover his own tracks in case anything went wrong. He couldn’t afford to have you find out that he was trying to have you killed. You’d have thrown the Calisher case wide open and had him arrested. He had to be roundabout—he had to keep Joe in the dark. There was always the chance we’d catch Joe before Joe got to you and if that happened Kendrick had to be in the clear. So he arranged to put the suspicion on Harlan.”

  “But what about Maria?”

  “I told you I don’t think he meant her to die. But it worked to his advantage. It gave Joe more reason than ever to kill you. And it got a big financial load off Kendrick’s back. You don’t have to pay dead people.

  “Victorio’s car puts Kendrick at the scene of the crime,” Watchman went on. “And I expect after we get a warrant we’ll find the Seconal and a hacksaw that matches the marks on Jimmy’s tie rod.”

  Rand’s face was pale yellow against the somber books. “If that’s all the evidence you’ve got you won’t convict him on a jaywalking rap, let alone murder.”

  “I think the hacksaw will turn up. It’ll connect him to the Oto murder. We may never prove in court that he was responsible for the deaths of Maria and little Joe but we’ll prove he killed Calisher. We’ll nail him cold on that one.”

  “With what?”

  “The evidence you give me.”

  “Out of the goodness of my magnanimous heart?”

  “Out of the Anglo-Saxon businessman’s enlightened self-interest, Mr. Rand. You’re wide open to prosecution. Extortion. Bribery. Withholding evidence in a felony case.”

  “Prove that.”

  “Do you think I can�
�t?” Watchman demanded.

  Rand met his gaze. That he was not sure of his ground was clear enough; he knew the extent of Watchman’s knowledge but he wasn’t sure how much evidence Watchman could produce.

  Watchman had to play the last cards.

  He said, “You’ll still have some of your hide left intact if you use your head. Look: whatever happens to Kendrick, the tribe won’t go on using him to represent them. There’ll be another lawyer. It may be Tom Victorio. You won’t have a lever against him. He’ll drag you into court and you’ll lose every drop of water you’ve got up here.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “Come off it, Rand.”

  Rand’s eyes flicked at him irritably.

  Watchman said, “The tribe’s got an axe to grind too. It would be pretty good if they could nail down proof that all these sneak murders had been committed by a white man. That kind of thing’s damned important to them. I imagine you’d find a more sympathetic ear in Whiteriver if you went partway down that road with them.”

  Rand stared at him, half in disbelief. “I didn’t take you for a cheap politician, Trooper.”

  “I’m not talking about a frame. If an Indian had been guilty of any of this we wouldn’t be here talking about it. I’m giving you an incentive for telling the truth.”

  Rand watched him through half-lidded eyes that failed to convey the indifference he was trying to display.

  Watchman said, “A few years ago the Tribal Council offered you a compromise, didn’t they?”

  “One acre-foot in ten,” Rand grated. “It wasn’t enough. Not near enough.”

  “There’s a few thousand Indians down here, Mr. Rand. How many mouths have you got to feed on your ranch? I imagine the tribe thought it was a damned generous offer.”

  “They thought so. I didn’t.”

  “Maybe it’ll look a little better to you now, since it’s going to be a choice of one-tenth or nothing at all.”

  Rand just watched him.

  “You’d have to quit irrigating some fields. But your cows wouldn’t go thirsty. I don’t know how your white mind works but if it was me I’d rather have one-tenth of that water than none of it.”

  “Assuming what you say is true, why should the tribe offer to renew the compromise if they think they can win a hundred percent of it in court?”

  “I think they’d go along with it. Provided they had your help convicting Kendrick.”

  “Convicting him hell. You haven’t got a scrap of evidence.”

  “That’s why we’re still here talking, Mr. Rand, and not on our way to the nearest county jail.” Watchman decided there had been enough of this; he changed his tone. “When he goes down you’ll go with him unless you do something to prevent it right now. Later’s too late. You follow me? If you don’t get off Kendrick’s ship right now you sink with it. The last lifeboat’s being lowered right here in this room. Right now. Nobody’s going to be able to keep your name out of it, nobody’s going to protect your public image. It’s too late for that. But you can avoid prosecution.”

  “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “You know damn well I’ll get enough on him to send him up for the Jimmy Oto murder. Somebody must have seen him drive out of town in the direction of Cuncon the day he sawed through Jimmy’s axle rod. He wouldn’t have snapped his mouth shut and started bleating about a search warrant if that hacksaw was out of sight and if he didn’t have a Seconal prescription that’ll match the contents of the dead woman’s stomach, and if he didn’t have those payments recorded in his private check stubs. And I’ll tell you one other thing. As soon as all this leaks out of this building and the word gets around the Reservation it won’t be just Joe Threepersons who’s out there gunning for your hide. It’ll be every Apache in these mountains. Now you think that one over, Mr. Rand.”

  “You bastard. Whether you had any proof or not you’d throw me to the wolves just the same.”

  “Because you and I both know I wouldn’t be throwing an innocent man to the wolves. My conscience would get along just fine.”

  “You’re a class-A son of a bitch. You’re supposed to operate according to certain rules, Trooper.”

  “Oh I learned all about rules when I was a Navajo kid in a mission school, Mr. Rand. I learned exactly what you can do with the rules.”

  “You’re a strange bastard to be a cop, that’s sure as God made little green apples, ain’t it.” Rand took a deep breath into his chest and held it there momentarily and let it out noisily. His attention bobbed around the cluttered cell and came back to rest against Watchman. Finally he spoke again. “Let’s put it in the form of a hypothesis. No admissions of fact.”

  “Put it any way you want to,” Watchman said. “Just point me to the evidence.”

  “Kendrick was having an affair with my wife. All right. Hypothesis. Suppose Ross Calisher stumbles across the two of them one night. He’s ignorant of this affair. He threatens to tell me what he knows—unless Gwen bestows the same favors on him that she’s been bestowing on Kendrick. You follow?”

  “Go on.”

  “Kendrick’s got a jealous streak a mile wide. It’s a funny story, Trooper, it’s a Goddamned comedy. Kendrick doesn’t want Calisher screwing my wife.”

  “There’s more than that.”

  Rand nodded. “Hypothesis. Kendrick doesn’t know I’m already fully aware of his affair with Gwen. He knows if she goes to Nevada, say, and files for divorce, she won’t get much of a financial settlement out of me if I can file a countersuit and charge her with adultery and prove it. In a state that doesn’t recognize community property, adultery is grounds for getting cut off without a penny. Now Kendrick’s just as greedy as anybody else. He not only wants my wife, he wants my money.

  “Here’s the next part of the comedy routine: he doesn’t know about the quit-claim Gwen signed, the deal she made when she married me. So Kendrick thinks he can’t afford to have Calisher be a witness to my wife’s adultery. He thinks it would cost him a lot of money if I had a witness like that. It’s damned funny. I laughed a lot at the time. He kills a man for profit and then it turns out he’s bought a pig in a poke. This is all hypothetical, you understand.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “But now we get into a little trouble,” Rand said. His voice was getting smoother all the time. “I’d like to help you out but here’s the rub. Let’s finish the hypothesis. Let’s assume I caught Kendrick red-handed when he shot Calisher. Let’s assume I brought him up to the office and got the whole thing on tape. A conversation between Kendrick and me in which Kendrick admitted his crime. Now the problem is, I can’t allow that tape out of my hands, can I? It’s got my voice on it as well as Kendrick’s. If it goes into court there’s no way I come out of it with a clean record.”

  “Lying,” Watchman said, “is getting to be a habit with you. You just don’t know when to quit.” He had no patience left for this. “If that was your evidence it wouldn’t have been any use to you. Kendrick would know you could never afford to give it to the police—it would take you right down with him as an accessory after the fact. Now let’s have the truth. You’re stalling and there’s nothing left to stall for. You’ve got evidence on him and it’s leakproof or you wouldn’t have kept him in your pocket all these years.”

  Rand made a fist and opened it, empty. “All right. What the hell. I’ve got two things. One’s a paraffin test. I had a private lab do an analysis on Kendrick’s hand the morning after the shooting. It’s dated, bonded and notarized. It shows he’d fired a gun within the past twenty-four hours. The second thing’s his own signed confession. Holograph, all in his own handwriting. Dated the day after the murder. He put in every detail. Every single detail except the fact that I’d seen the shooting through the window. My name never appears in it except as Ross’s employer and Gwen’s husband. It’s in the form of a suicide note. If I ever decided to produce the thing I could always say I just found it and he must have written the note and gone out
somewhere to kill himself but then changed his mind.”

  “And where was the confession supposed to be hiding between then and now?”

  “What difference does that make? I’ll produce it.”

  “No good. It’s not admissible evidence unless we can show how we got it.”

  “That’s your problem,” Rand said. “You asked for the evidence, I’m producing it. How you use it is your problem.”

  “Maria,” Watchman said. “She could have had it.”

  “What?”

  “My hypothesis this time. Suppose somebody was to plant the confession among Maria’s effects where some eager-beaver County Attorney could find it. She was using it to blackmail Kendrick, see, and that’ll also explain why Kendrick paid her all that money.”

  “Kind of irregular, Trooper.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Not a one.”

  “All right, where is it?”

  “Not here. It’s in a safe deposit box in Phoenix. I’ll get it to you.”

  “Get it to Victorio. I don’t want to lay eyes on it until it’s been discovered legally.”

  “All right, I’ll do that. And I’ll get to Masterman first thing in the morning and tell him to start writing up the papers for an out-of-court settlement on a nine-to-one basis. If the tribe accepts it I’ll deliver Kendrick’s confession to Victorio.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Watchman said. He was very tired now and it amazed him the sun was still shining in the window. It was only half-past three.

  “Such as?”

  “Joe Threepersons.”

  “He’s your problem.”

  “You’re the one he’s gunning for. You can help us with him.”

  “How?”

  “Bait, Mr. Rand.”

  Rand thought it over. “I don’t like that much.”

  “You owe him a lot more than that.”

  “Let the son of a bitch sue me.”

  “Come on,” Watchman whispered. “Come on.”

  “Shit,” Rand said.

  “Let’s go.”

  In the office Kendrick sat as if a spring were coiled beneath him. Watchman said to Buck Stevens, “Locate Pete Porvo—he’s the local cop. Tell him to put Kendrick on ice until we come back for him.”