Two
Huron had changed since my last visit. The local newspaper office was closed, probably having been wolfed down by a larger competitor and relocated. The restaurant was boarded up, real estate offices had taken over several of the retail stores in the business district, and the town had sprouted a tail along the main highway made up of chain department stores, fast-food franchises, and an antiques mall with all the old-world charm of a sperm bank. The twenty-first century was bearing down on Huron like an iron heel in an Air Jordan.
Sergeant Early was a solid-looking number with a military brush moustache in a cocoa-brown uniform with a sheriff’s star embroidered on each sleeve. He looked at my credentials, then got up from behind his desk and rescued his cap off a peg. “Supreme Court ought to have its head examined. Why a private cop can go into a place where sworn authority is barred is the first question the shrink should ask.”
“It’s a waiver the policyholder signs when he applies for insurance,” I said.
“He must’ve been drunk when he signed it. Mike Hopper won’t even sign a traffic citation. But he’s no insurance fraud.”
Early accompanied me in my car to a plot just outside the village limits containing a small barn, a couple of other outbuildings, and a pile of charred timbers that had once been a house. He leaned against a fender while I pulled an old rubber raincoat and a pair of galoshes out of the trunk and put them on. “What do you look for, exactly?” he asked.
“Suspicious burn patterns, combustible materials where they don’t belong, obvious evidence of arson. If they’re not present I leave the actual cause of the fire to the experts. I’m just a troubleshooter.”
“Well, you won’t find any trouble here. Hopper’s a pain in the butt. He’s also one of the most honest men I know.”
According to the file Lawrence Otell had given me, the Hopper family had sold its acreage short to developers years before, then watched the developers make back ten times the investment by subdividing, building houses, and selling the plots for a hundred thousand apiece. Meanwhile Mike, the last of the family, had become an independent trucker to survive. He had been alone at home, sleeping on the second story, when the fire broke out, and had escaped with only the pajamas he was wearing. The house was totally engulfed by the time the fire department arrived.
Sergeant Early remained outside while I waded through a muck of sodden ashes, turning over lumps of melted and half-burned furniture and shining my flashlight into corners made inaccessible by the piles of debris. The stench was one I could never get used to, which was why I didn’t specialize in arson investigation. I’d only taken the job to remind Midwest Confidential I was still in business. The company had saved me from a negative balance more times than I could count.
I fished out a couple of bowling trophies, smeared with soot but undamaged, and a thick spiralbound book charred around the edges that upon opening I found to contain what looked like family snapshots going back to the thirties, judging by the cars and clothing that appeared in them. These items I wrapped in one of the kitchen trash bags I’d carried along to store evidence and laid atop what used to be a cabinet television. The sky looked like rain or snow, and such mementos are irreplaceable. That was it for the ground floor, as well as the second story, which had collapsed along with the rest of the house.
Finding the stairs to the basement I switched on my flash and descended, testing each step before I trusted my full weight to it. The half-cellar was dank and airless, and the stagnant water from the firemen’s hoses came up almost to my boot tops on the concrete floor. Something nudged one of my calves. My light found a red plastic can, half-burned, that I might have thought was a watering can floating on the surface if it weren’t just the kind of thing I was looking for. I picked it up by what was left of its handle and smelled the inside. Gasoline never smells like anything but what it is.
Advertised warnings to the contrary, a lot of people store gasoline in their cellars. I did some more looking. In a corner relatively untouched by the flames, I found two more cans just like it. Training the flashlight beam around the room, I spotted another floating object and waded over to it. It was a wooden dowel about two feet long, partially burned, with a husk of what might have been charred oilcloth wrapped around the end. On this end I smelled more gasoline. I carried the cans and the makeshift torch upstairs and showed them to Sergeant Early.
“It’s not conclusive,” I said. “Experts may be able to tell if the fire started in the basement, or maybe not. Right now it looks like someone doused the place with gas, then lit a torch and threw it in from the top of the stairs where he could get out before it got going.”
Early took off his cap, ran his fingers back through his short thinning hair, and put it back on. “Mike’s got enemies. One of ‘em might have been sore enough to burn him out.”
“If that’s true, he did him a favor, at least financially. The place was insured for a lot more than he would have gotten for it on the market.”
“Let’s go talk to him.”
Three
Mike Hopper’s tractor-trailer, bearing his name on the cab, was parked behind a motel on an as yet undeveloped section of state highway, one of the old-fashioned kind with bungalows lined up on either side of the office. We were greeted at the door of No. 11 by a big man with narrow eyes, a reddish-brown beard and moustache that concealed his mouth completely, and a strip of untanned flesh at the top of his forehead where a cap would rest normally. He was shoeless and had on an undershirt and stained workpants. One of his big hands was wrapped around a beer can.
“Mike, this is Amos Walker. He’s with your insurance company. We need to talk.”
“I said I didn’t want nobody snooping around my place. I was born there. Nobody goes in without an invite but family, and I’m all the family that’s left.”
“It’s gone past that.” I held up one of the gasoline cans. “Is this yours?”
“I sold my pickup for a down payment on my rig. It’s diesel. I got no use for gas.”
“What do you owe on your rig?” Early asked.
“I’m three payments behind, not that it’s your damn business. What the hell goes on here?”
I read it like a primer. “You get much behind, the company repossesses your tractor-trailer. Without a rig you starve. That’s what goes on here. Did you put a match to your place for the insurance?”
He almost caught me square on the jaw, but only because I thought he’d need more reaction time. As it was his fist clipped my left ear when I moved my head. The sergeant caught his wrist and twisted it behind his back, using Hopper’s own momentum against him. “Hold on, Mike. Walker doesn’t know you. Can you think of anybody you’ve had a run-in with who might want to set fire to your house?”
When the answer didn’t come right away, Early twisted harder. “No! Jeez, Tom, who do you think I hang out with? I tee somebody off, he takes a swing at me. He don’t come around in the middle of the night and try to fry me in my bed.”
“Mike’s right. His crowd isn’t that original.”
“In that case, Sergeant, I’m informing you that Midwest Confidential intends to press charges against Mr. Hopper for attempted fraud.”
“You heard him, Mike. I’m going to have to put you in custody.”
As he said it, Early gave me a black look that told me all I needed to know about which man he’d rather put handcuffs on.
Four
He was still wearing the look an hour later, when he returned to his desk in the substation after seeing Hopper off to the county lock-up in the back of a squad car. “I never had to arrest a friend before,” he said. “I like it a lot, no, I don’t.”
I said, “I don’t much like being the bad cop, but he knows you.”
“I still don’t think he did it.”
“Neither do I.”
He touched his moustache, watching me. I liked that way he had of waiting for answers to the questions he didn’t ask. He had a lot of city cop in
him for a glorified security officer.
I offered him a cigarette, and lit one for myself when he shook his head. “I wanted to get a look at him, just to see if he was the type who would throw away family treasures in return for the fast buck,” I said, depositing the match in a clay ashtray that looked as if Early had a kid who went to summer camp. “He isn’t. He was telling the truth when he said he didn’t want anyone but family poking through the ashes of his birthplace. If he burned his own house, he might sacrifice his bowling trophies to make it look good, but he’d find some way to save family pictures. He almost lost an album full of memories in the flames. He didn’t set that fire.”
“Who do you think did?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nobody. Maybe somebody sneaked in after the fire and planted the gasoline cans and the torch to make it look like arson.”
“Somebody’d have to hate Mike a lot to try to frame him. He’s got some enemies, but he’s got a lot of friends too. I’d hate to think what they’d do to someone who’d sink that low. If you didn’t buy it, why’d you have me arrest Mike?”
“If whoever it was thinks it worked, he may not be looking over his shoulder when we come up on him from behind. It would help if someone saw somebody hanging around the scene after the fire was out.”
“That’s a tough one. There are always gawkers. Pesky kids. Wait.” He touched his moustache again. “Al Ludendorf—that’s the fire chief—told me he caught Lloyd Golson skulking around the night after the fire. Golson’s a petty thief. Al thought he might’ve been there to loot the place, but he searched him and didn’t find anything on him. He ran him off.”
“Where would I find Golson?”
Sergeant Early smiled for the first time since we’d met. “Hell, that’s easy. I caught him shoplifting a circular saw out of the Huron Hardware yesterday. He’s locked up in the same wing with Mike Hopper.”
Five
I drove straight from the county seat to the Midwest Confidential building. Ms. Roland, Lawrence Otell’s secretary, was putting on her coat when I stepped off the elevator into the reception area.
“Quitting time, sorry,” she said. “Mr. Otell’s busy clearing up some unfinished business.”
“So am I. Got a minute?”
“Just about that.” She glanced at the watch strapped to the underside of her wrist.
“I guess Mr. Otell’s pretty valuable to the company.”
“He holds the record for delivering the most policies with the fewest claims. He’s the front runner for the president’s job when Mr. Silverman retires.”
“That’s important, huh. I mean about his reporting the fewest claims against the policies he sold.”
“Well, yes. For a while it looked like Jeff Knapp had the inside track because he sold more policies, but then he caught a bad break during fire season. It’s kind of unfair when you think about it. No one can predict that.”
“You don’t know your boss as well as you think.”
“I’m sorry?”
But I was already going through the door to the private office. Inside Otell looked up quickly from the paperwork spread across his desk. “Around here we knock,” he said.
I said, “Things are a little less formal in Huron. I just spoke with Lloyd Golson.”
His square face showed nothing. “Who’s that?”
“You’ll find him in company files. Midwest Confidential sold a lot of policies around Huron. Several burglary claims were filed. His name came up in four of them as a suspect in the break-ins. He was convicted twice. Is that why you decided to use him, because his name kept showing up in claim cases?”
“Naturally I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You’ve got a shot at the presidency because you’ve made the company more money from policies than you’ve lost in claims. That would change if too many customers like Mike Hopper were paid off for their losses in fires. Tampering with the fire scene to make it look like Hopper torched his own house for the insurance would allow the company to reject his claim, preserving your record and your chances for advancement.”
He pointed a finger. “Repeat that in front of witnesses and I’ll sue you for character assassination.”
“I can’t kill what you don’t have,” I said. “Golson talked, Otell. He ratted you out to get a shoplifting charge dropped that would have imprisoned him for five years as a repeat offender. You called him the morning after the fire and offered him five hundred dollars to plant evidence implicating Hopper.”
“A man like that would say anything to stay out of jail.”
“Maybe. It’s enough to make the authorities curious about other aborted claims against policies you sold. A man who would break the law once to improve his statistics would do it again. I’m guessing when they’re finished taking a hard look you’ll be facing several counts of interfering in criminal investigations and insurance fraud. You won’t like prison any more than Golson. The pinstripes go the wrong way.”
He thought about it a second, then opened the top drawer of his desk and brought out a revolver. That disappointed me.
“If you’re going to shoot yourself, don’t do it in your own office. That joke’s too old.”
“Who said anything about shooting myself?” He pointed the revolver at me.
Just then Ms. Roland came in. “Larry? Is everything—” She froze when she saw the gun.
Otell didn’t. In a second he was on his feet and lunging. He grabbed her arm, pulled her off balance, and swept behind her, grabbing her around the waist and clapping the revolver’s muzzle under her chin. “Don’t move, Walker!”
“Well, that one’s even older,” I said. “I thought you didn’t go in for blood sports.” But I didn’t move.
He backed through the open door, bringing her with him. I gave him a beat, then followed.
They were standing in front of the elevator. He took the gun from her throat long enough to push the button with his elbow, then replaced it. His expression was totally alien. The shock of a drop as long as the one from the president’s office to the defendant’s table affects many different people many different ways.
The doors slid open. He shoved the woman stumbling into the office and backed inside the elevator, swinging the gun from side to side. I stayed where I was. The doors closed and the car started down.
I helped Ms. Roland to her feet. “Are you going to call the police?” she asked.
“No.” I went back into Otell’s office. The wall behind the desk was made entirely of glass and looked down onto the street before the entrance to the underground garage where the employees parked. The secretary joined me.
“I called the parking attendant earlier,” I said. “Otell drives a gray Mercedes?”
“Yes. Are the police waiting for him?”
“Not exactly.”
A minute later a gray Mercedes nosed out into the street. It was waiting to turn when a battered Dodge pickup swept away from the curb and plowed into the door on the driver’s side. After a pause the passenger’s side door popped open and Otell piled out, waving his revolver. Just then a second pickup roared down the lane on that side and screeched to a halt. Both doors swung open and the occupants of the cab leveled shotguns across the tops. By then other pickups had appeared, ringing in the Mercedes and the man who had been driving it. All the drivers and passengers had shotguns except one.
Sergeant Early stepped down from a Ford Ranger, walked up to Otell, and took away his gun without a struggle.
The Crooked Way
One
You couldn’t miss the Indian if you’d wanted to. He was sitting all alone in a corner booth, which was probably his idea but he hadn’t much choice because there was barely enough room in it for him. He had shoulders going into the next county and a head the size of a basketball and he was holding a beer mug that looked like a shot glass between his horned palms. As I approached the booth he looked up at me—not very far up—through slits in a face mad
e up of bunched ovals and a nose like the corner of a building. His skin was the color of old brick.
“Mr. Frechette?” I asked.
“Amos Walker?”
I said I was. Coming from him my name sounded like two stones dropped into deep water. He made no move to shake hands, but he inclined his head a fraction of an inch and I borrowed a chair from a nearby table and joined him. He had on a blue shirt buttoned to the neck and his hair, parted on one side and plastered down, was blue-black without a trace of gray. Nevertheless he was about fifty.
“Charlie Stoat says you track like an Osage,” he said. “I hope you’re better than that. I couldn’t track a train.”
“How is Charlie? I haven’t seen him since that insurance thing.”
“Going under. The construction boom went bust in Houston just when he was expanding his operation.”
“What’s that do to yours?” He’d told me over the telephone he was in construction.
“Nothing worth mentioning. I’ve been running on a shoestring for years. You can’t break a poor man.”
I signaled the bartender for a beer and he brought one over. It was a workingman’s hangout across the street from the Ford plant in Highland Park. The shift wasn’t due to change for an hour and we had the place to ourselves. “You said your daughter ran away,” I said, when the bartender had left. “What makes you think she’s in Detroit?”
He drank off half his beer and belched dramatically. “When does client privilege start?”
“It never stops.”
I watched him make up his mind. Indians aren’t nearly as hard to read as they appear in books. He picked up a folded newspaper from the seat beside him and spread it out on the table facing me. It was yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, with a banner:
Boyd Manhunt Moves Northeast
Bandit’s Van Found Abandoned in Detroit
I had read a related wire story in that morning’s Detroit Free Press. Following the unassisted shotgun robberies of two savings and loan offices near Houston, concerned citizens had reported seeing 22-year-old Virgil Boyd in Mexico and Oklahoma, but his green van with Texas plates had turned up in a city lot five minutes from where we were sitting. As of that morning, Detroit Police Headquarters was paved with feds and sun-crinkled out-of-state cops chewing toothpicks.
Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection Page 29
