Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 11

by Jupiter's Bones

  For the first time, Benton’s dull eyes focused on the detectives. “Then I’d like to call Father Jupiter if you wouldn’t mind it.”

  Oliver and Marge exchanged glances. Oliver jumped in. “That’s going to be hard to arrange, Benton. I was hoping Brother Pluto would have told you by now.”

  “Told me what?”

  Marge spoke softly. “Father Jupiter died two days ago.”

  For a brief moment, Benton didn’t react. He sat frozen in his position with only his chest rising and falling. Then he said, “So that’s why he wasn’t coming up. I thought he was mad at me.” He looked at Marge. “Wonder why Brother Pluto didn’t tell me?”

  “He didn’t want to make you feel bad.”

  “How’d he die?”

  Benton appeared to be absorbing the words.

  “I can’t say too much, Benton,” Marge said. “But I’ll tell you what it says in the papers. It’s a suspicious death by overdose. Possibly a suicide—”

  “Pigshit!” He blushed. “Pardon my language, ma’am.”

  “That’s all right.” Remaining in the corner of the cell, Marge squatted. That way she was eye level with him. She didn’t want to ask anything about Nova. But what would it hurt to ask him about Jupiter’s death? “Why do you say his suicide is pigstuff?”

  “’Cause he weren’t the type to do that.”

  Marge waited. Nothing. She prompted, “Tell me why you think Father Jupiter wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

  “Ma’am, I ain’t like Brother Bob or Brother Pluto. I ain’t smart. But I kin tell when a man’s happy. When we used to take out the telerscope, I’ve never seen such a content being as Father Jupiter. The way he looked at the stars…like he was one with the heavens. He tole me that one day he was going up there…with the stars.”

  Oliver said, “That might have meant that he was going to kill himself—”

  “No, sir,” Benton corrected. “He was talkin’ about his time machine. He was buildin’ one.” He looked at Johannsen. “I told you that, didn’t I, Sheriff?”

  “That you did.”

  “Father Jupiter tole me he was talkin’ to a university ’bout it. About his ideas. He was real excited.”

  No one spoke for a few seconds. Oliver glanced at Marge. He said, “What university?”

  “I don’t recall. But he said ’twas a big one.”

  Marge said, “Southwest University of Technology—”

  “That’s it.”

  Again the two detectives exchanged looks. Marge said, “His old haunt.”

  “Also where his daughter works,” Oliver added.

  Marge asked the farmhand, “Did Jupiter ever mention his daughter, Europa?”

  “Don’t recall,” Benton answered. “Maybe he did say something about a daughter. ’Course all the ladies at the Order of the Rings of God was his spiritual daughter.”

  “She’s not from the Order,” Marge said. “She’s Jupiter’s real daughter—his biological daughter. Jupiter was married before he became Jupiter. Did you know that?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not. Still, it don’t surprise me.”

  “How long have you known Jupiter?” Oliver asked.

  “Ten years.”

  A decade is a long time. Marge asked, “How’d you meet him, Benton?”

  The farmhand tensed in concentration. “Believe ’twas when I worked at Harrison…up in Saugus. Not too far from the Order. Mebbe twenty minutes by car.”

  “I know where Saugus is,” Marge said.

  “All right. So you know.” Benton straightened his spine and scratched his nose with his cuffed hands. He was asked an important question and he had to answer it with the proper respect. “Father Jupiter jus’ came up to me the one day. We talked some. Then he left.”

  “What did you and Father Jupiter talk about, Benton?”

  He thought about that. “’Bout me, I suppose. Did I like my job? Stuff like that.”

  They waited for more. But nothing came forth.

  “Then what happened?” Marge urged.

  Benton said, “He visited me another day. Agin, we talked. I reckon this went on for a couple of weeks. Then one day, he asked if I’d like to run his chicken ranch up here in Central City. He said he’d pay me as much as I was making at Harrison, and I’d have a whole house to live in—not just a room. Sounded good so I said all right.”

  Oliver had taken out his notebook. “Do you remember the address of the Harrisons?”

  “Not Harrisons. Just Harrison. No ess.”

  “Ah,” Oliver said. “It’s the name of a place, not the name of a couple.”

  “That’s right.”

  The conversation was making Marge very curious about Benton’s past relationship with Jupiter. “What kind of place is Harrison?”

  “What kind of place?”

  “What kind of people live there?”

  “Oh.” Again, Benton scratched his nose. This time, he also wiped his soaking face. “Lots of different people. Some were drying out on alcohol, some were drying out on drugs, some were just plain old folks. Me, I didn’t do no drugs or alcohol. I was the handyman. They let me live there—”

  “Who’s they?” Marge asked.

  Benton thought about that for a long time. “The woman who hired me was named Florine. That’s all I knowed about her.”

  “How’d you find the job, Benton?” Oliver asked.

  A stretch of silence. “I think one of the nurses tole me about it.”

  “Nurses?” Marge asked. “Were you in a hospital, Benton?”

  “Board and care,” the farmhand replied flatly. “I came out of the army with a bad case of congestion that didn’t go away. In the VA for two years, then they moved me to board and care in Newhall. Took a while for me to get better. A long while. The nurses used to ask me to fix things. They knowed I was good with my hands.”

  More silence.

  “I recall that one of them mentioned Harrison to me. I worked there for five years. Never missed a day, though at times I was pooped. Got tired of people’s bitches and messed-up lives. So Father Jupiter’s offer sounded all right to me.”

  Saugus was in the Foothill division. Ten years ago Marge was working in Foothill as a detective in sex crimes. As far as she remembered, there weren’t any murders resembling Nova’s dissected body. If Benton had been a serial killer all those years ago, he had used a different MO. “How did Jupiter find you? Had he ever lived at Harrison?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What was Jupiter’s connection to Harrison?”

  The farmhand shrugged. So much for Benton’s power of conjecture.

  “And this was around ten years ago?” Marge asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did he talk about time machines back then?” Oliver asked.

  “No, sirree. Back then, it was all about God and the heavens and the evils of modern science and scientists. That’s why I was real surprised when he brought up the telerscope a year ago. ’Cause a telerscope sure is a science object. Still, it seemed to make him happy.”

  Oliver gave Marge a look. He said, “I need a word with my partner in private, Sheriff. Let’s take five.”

  “No problem.” Johannsen liberated himself and the two detectives from the cage. He locked the door behind him. “We’ll be back, Benton. Would you like a cold drink?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He lay down on the bench. “Think I’ll snooze a spell.”

  “You do that.”

  To Marge, Oliver said, “Let’s take a walk.”

  They stepped outside under a star-studded blanket. The air was saturated with cricket calls, cicadas and the low croaks of lusting bullfrogs. The sheriff’s office was in the middle of town—the only storefront still lit up. The rest of the shops were dark and shut tight, to be expected since it was almost one in the morning.

  Oliver asked, “You believe Benton? About Jupiter being happy and not the type to kill himself?”

  Marge said, “We
should believe a man who has body parts in his kitchen?”

  “Good point.” Oliver smoothed back sweat-soaked hair. “So why do I feel we’re missing something?”

  “Let’s start with what we know.”

  “A novel idea,” Oliver said. “We’ve got Jupiter dead. And we know that he was being poisoned.”

  “Although not in lethal doses.”

  “And now we have his farmhand…who granted is a weirdo with a dead body in his kitchen…that’s a big granted—”

  Marge broke in. “Look, these are the facts. Either Jupiter ODed himself or he didn’t OD himself. If he ODed himself, that contradicts what Benton says about Jupiter being a happy camper. If he didn’t OD himself, then someone did it to him. And that goes hand in hand with the poisoning. The way it’s laid out, it looks like the arsenic wasn’t going fast enough so someone acted drastically.”

  Oliver said, “Agreed. So who wanted Jupiter dead?”

  Marge said, “Dr. Little says that you can last awhile with arsenic in your system, but not forever. Because there is a build-up factor, each bit adding to each other. The poisoning couldn’t have been going on forever—maybe a year or so.”

  “Which corresponds to about the time that Jupiter was rediscovering science…”

  Marge said, “Europa told Decker that Jupiter was as sharp as a tack when it came to their scientific discussions.”

  Oliver said, “It seems to me that Jupiter was coming back to his old field after what…a twenty-plus-year hiatus?”

  “Could be. But what does that have to do with someone pumping him with arsenic—not enough to kill him, but enough to make him sick as a dog—” Marge stopped herself. “It made him sick, Scotty. Maybe it also made him addled. Confused enough so he couldn’t concentrate.”

  Neither one spoke.

  Marge said, “The question I’m asking is: Was someone poisoning him to keep him from thinking about his former preoccupation with time machines?”

  Suddenly Oliver’s eyes widened. “Margie, suppose you were a scientist trying to establish a distinguished reputation for yourself as a hard-nosed cosmologist. And you have this father who was once brilliant, but had been laughed out of the profession as a crackpot—a crazy, demented man who kept talking about building time machines. And finally, when you think he’s out of the picture …well, suddenly he reemerges with the same crazy, embarrassing ideas—”

  “Europa?”

  “Didn’t Benton say Jupiter was speaking to the people at Southwest U? Margie, she teaches there. She must cringe every time someone mentions his name.”

  “Europa hadn’t seen her father in years—”

  “If she’s telling the truth.”

  Marge gave his idea serious thought. “She finally manages to get this albatross off her neck, and just when she’s getting somewhere in her field, he reappears.”

  “Exactly,” Oliver said. “So what would it hurt if she slipped a little arsenic in his vitamins to slow him down. You know, just slipped a little powder in Jupiter’s drink or in his vitamin supplements—”

  “Hold on,” Marge said. “Who said there was arsenic in Jupiter’s vitamins?”

  “Deck mentioned it as a possibility—”

  “So you don’t know if there is or isn’t arsenic in any of the vitamins.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “This is all theoretical.”

  “Of course, it’s theoretical. If we had facts, we wouldn’t be debating anything.” Oliver began to walk back to the sheriff’s office. “Don’t forget this, Margie. Europa is the beneficiary of a million-dollar cash life policy plus more if the death is ruled accidental.”

  “But that cash policy has been in effect for years. Why would she take him out now if it was only for the money?”

  “Because he wasn’t ruining her reputation until recently,” Oliver countered. “And maybe Europa didn’t want him to die. She only wanted him incapacitated so he wouldn’t be an embarrassment. When the arsenic didn’t work as well as she hoped, and he continued to go on with his time machines, then Europa was forced to do something permanent.”

  “So how did she OD him if she hadn’t seen him for fifteen years? How would she even get into the compound?”

  “She had help,” Oliver said. “Bob.”

  “She hasn’t seen Bob in years.”

  “So she’s lying. Or maybe not. I don’t know.” Oliver shrugged. “No theory is without its glitches.” They walked in silence for a moment. He said, “What’s with this place where Benton worked? Harrison. Ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think it is? Rehab?”

  “Sounds like it,” Marge said.

  “And what do you think Benton was really doing there?” Oliver said drolly. “My guess is he was popping Demerol to keep the demons away. He looks like a mental case.”

  “We should be able to verify that,” Marge answered. “What I’d like to know is Jupiter’s connection to Harrison?”

  “Good question.” Oliver looked at his watch. “When’s this lawyer gonna get here? Johannsen said he’d have someone here within the hour, and that was an hour ago.”

  “Let’s just wait it out,” Marge said.

  “Stuck in shitsville. Bet they don’t even have cable. Why do I get all the plum assignments?”

  “Must be your charm.”

  Pluto exclaimed, “Your outrageous actions are in flagrant violation of citizen’s rights. I am not going to let this pass. Someone will have your badge for this!”

  Decker slowed his speed. The road was rutted and hard on the tires. “If someone wants my badge, he can have it. It would sure make my wife happy.”

  “Deliberately denying me access to Benton—”

  “Just protecting you, Brother Pluto. You wouldn’t want to be charged with collusion—”

  “What?!”

  “Anybody who has visited that farm in the last two days is under suspicion.”

  “Then that lets me out—”

  “As soon as we verify your story.”

  “I’m not worried about myself! I’m innocent! I’m absolutely stunned by what you…discovered. It’s horrid! It’s obscene! It’s repulsive. It’s grotesque! I am deeply saddened about Brother Nova’s untimely and violent death. He will be missed as the great man he was, and the perpetrator of this crime should be punished to the maximum. But right now I’m concerned about Benton!”

  “So you don’t think Benton was the perpetrator?”

  “I can’t comment on that.”

  So far, they hadn’t found a kill spot on the ranch. But Decker had other ideas as to where the murder might have taken place.

  Pluto was talking. “He needs representation. You and your lackeys are abrogating Benton’s due process, knowing full well that the man does not understand the gravity of the situation.”

  “Benton will be protected. They’re calling in an interim lawyer until you get someone up there.”

  “I know what kind of lawyer you chose. Some idiot out of Podunk U. named Jeb—”

  “I have a cousin named Jeb. He’s a pretty astute businessman—”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You just seem prejudiced against the name Jeb—”

  “You think you can storm-troop your way over me. But you’re sadly mistaken! And, on top of everything else, you won’t even let me use the telephone.”

  “I’ve already explained this to you, Brother. The ranch’s lines were being used to conduct emergency tactical information—”

  “There are phone booths, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, I can’t have any kind of privileged information about a murder investigation transmitted through public airwaves.”

  “So I can’t call on your private line. But I can’t call on public lines either. You’re clearly violating my rights—”

  “I’m not violating your rights because I’m not charging you with anything…at least, not yet.”

>   “So what exactly are you doing with me?” Pluto demanded to know. “You’re not officially arresting me. But you are detaining me.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Just until we can clear up a few things.”

  “But you won’t let me make a simple phone call.”

  “As soon as we get to the station house, you can make your call.” Decker checked his watch. It was half-past one. “We’ve got another twenty minutes. Just hang on.”

  “Keeping me sequestered like some quarantined animal.”

  Decker gave up, turning a deaf ear to Pluto’s rantings. The outrage, the indignity, the emotional stress, the forthcoming lawsuits, blah, blah, blah. The threats went through him like a bad case of the runs. White noise.

  Decker heard his name over his radio. He picked up the mike and responded. His patience and his sneaky schemes were finally rewarded. The search warrants for the Order’s compound and grounds had come through. He acknowledged the information and signed off. Pluto must have heard some key words. He started to ask questions.

  “What’s she talking about? What warrants?”

  Decker said nothing.

  Pluto became agitated. “What warrants was she referring to? She mentioned the Order. What do warrants have to do with the Order? You can’t possibly believe that any of us had anything to do with Nova’s murder! Do you honestly believe that any of us would be so stupid as to stuff poor Nova in our own ranch and then allow your people to go search it?”

  The outraged Pluto was making some points. Decker said, “I don’t know. Would you be that stupid?”

  “I won’t dignify that with a response.”

  “Fine with me. Let’s enjoy the silence.”

  Pluto didn’t take the hint. “You’re only going to increase hostility and ill-will by allowing your men to trample again and again through our quarters. This horrible murder happened at the ranch. What does it have to do with searching the Order in the wee hours of the morning?”

  Decker asked, “So you think Benton did it?”

  “I told you, I won’t comment…well, who else would have done it? Nova was a much-respected, much-needed member of the Order. Why would we foul our own nest?”