“Oh no, oh no,” Mulheisen thought, as he dialed back. He hadn't called Sally after the foolishness a few nights earlier. He had thought about it, but he hadn't done it. He'd had an irrational notion that somehow Sally had heard about his panicky call to Jacky. He should have called. Instead he had shut her out of his mind. Now his mind was racing with thoughts of mayhem, of slaughter in a trailer house. Christmas was notorious for these hideous acts. With a premonition of disaster he listened to the phone ring.
As he had feared, Deputy Lee had serious business to report. Grace Garland's daughter had gone to visit her mother earlier that day. She had meant to visit on Christmas, but instead she had called around noon, intending to tell her mother that she would be over the next day. When there was no answer, she didn't think much about it. Her mother was probably out doing chores, or perhaps she had gone to the church or was visiting neighbors. The daughter, Calla Garland, had gone to dinner with a man she was seeing in Bozeman and she had gotten home too late to call again. The next morning, this morning, she had driven over to the Ruby Valley.
Mulheisen couldn't bear this tedious description of Calla Garland's Christmas plans. “What about Sally?” he demanded.
“Sally? This isn't about Sally.”
“Why are you calling from Tinstar?”
“I'm calling from the Garland ranch. Calla Garland found her mother in the barn. She was dead. It looked at first like she had a heart attack, but there's some problems. For one thing, the car is gone. Old Mrs. Garland had a 1989 Oldsmobile, which she kept in the garage next to the barn. She never drove it, hardly, except to church. She usually drove the pickup, but it's still parked in the barn.”
Jacky's matter-of-fact police manner was driving Mulheisen crazy. The man was normally so phlegmatic, he hardly said a dozen words all day, it seemed. Now he was droning away.
“So what's the problem?” Mulheisen asked.
“I'm getting to it,” Jacky said, unperturbed. “The daughter didn't find her mother in the house, so she went outside. She noticed the door to the garage was open and the car was gone, so she figured the old lady went visiting, but then she heard the milk cows bellowing in the barn. So she went in and found her. Dead. But where was the car? And why was the old lady's face bruised?”
“Have you talked to Sally?” Mulheisen broke in.
“Mul, this is not about Sally. This is about Grace Garland, the woman who owns—owned—the ranch next to Humann's. She may have been murdered. I thought you would be interested.”
“Sally worked for Mrs. Garland,” Mulheisen said. “She fed the cattle, or something. Have you talked to her?”
Jacky hadn't known that. He said he'd call back. It took twenty minutes, during which time Mulheisen paced back and forth, into the squad room for coffee, back to his office, back for more coffee.
“Sally may have seen the killer,” Jacky said.
“She's all right?”
“Yeah, she's all right. She was just leaving for the Garland ranch when I called.”
“You said killer,” Mulheisen said. “Is this just on the basis of a bruise and a missing car, or do you have more?”
“There's also the problem of a rifle,” Jacky said, “and the presence of a stranger.”
“What about the rifle?”
“The old lady's .30-.30 carbine was found in the barn, standing next to the door. It had a spent cartridge in it. Grace Garland may have fired it, maybe in self-defense, but she didn't get a chance to work the lever action, which would have ejected the shell and brought a fresh round into the chamber. That's the way it looks.”
“And Sally saw this stranger?” Mulheisen asked. “Was it a woman?”
“Yeah. How did you know that?”
“Was she tall? Short hair?”
Jacky was suspicious. “What do you know about this?”
“Tell me what Sally saw.”
“Yesterday morning, after feeding the cattle, Sally drove down to the barn just to say hello and deliver a present. She met a woman—tall, short hair, about thirty—who was coming out of the barn. This woman, who she didn't know from Adam—or Eve—said Grace was in the barn. She invited Sally into the barn. Sally didn't have time, she had to get home. It was Christmas and the kids were home alone. The woman urged her to come in and talk to Grace, but Sally said she'd see her later. She gave the woman the present, a scarf she'd knitted. Sally says she'd talked to Grace a couple days ago and Grace told her she had a cousin visiting. Sally figured this was the cousin.
“She feels pretty bad about this, Mul,” Jacky said. “She has an idea that maybe if she'd gone in the barn, she might have . . . you know. But I told her it was a good thing she didn't go in. It looks like this woman is our killer.”
Mulheisen shuddered. “Where is she now?”
“We're looking, Mul. We put out a four-state alarm on the car.”
“No, no,” Mulheisen said impatiently. “Where is Sally?”
“She's on her way up here,” Jacky said. “Somebody has to feed the cattle. Carrie's up here. Carrie'll bring her down to the house soon as she arrives.”
“But she's all right?” Mulheisen asked. “What was that—the woman kept asking her to come into the barn?”
“Yeah. Sally said she asked two or three times. Also, she said the woman was bleeding. Which is another reason to think it was murder. Not much blood from a heart attack. But the autopsy will tell us for sure.”
“Bleeding? The woman was bleeding? Wasn't Sally suspicious?”
“She said the woman had a torn pant leg and she was bleeding. The woman said she'd gotten tangled in some barbed wire. Said she was just going to go fix herself up, but she said it wasn't anything and Sally should come with her to the barn.”
Mulheisen muttered several semi-Christian oaths under his breath—or perhaps they were not so much Christian as blasphemous and obscene.
“Jacky, get her down to the house as soon as she shows up, get her on the phone.”
“Mul,” Jacky said, calmly, “I'm on the case. You can talk to her. I've got one upset woman here already. I'll call you back.” He hung up.
Mulheisen stared at the phone, enraged. But then he sat down. Jimmy Marshall came in and asked him what was up. Mulheisen gathered himself, calmed himself, and gave a brief reprise of what Jacky Lee had told him. Marshall wanted to know if this had anything to do with Joe Service, with Helen. Mulheisen said he wasn't sure, but it looked like it. He sensed that Marshall wasn't too keen on this complication.
Mulheisen sighed. “I don't know what the hell it means, Jimmy. Maybe it's just coincidence, but—”
“Murder next door to a killer is never coincidence, Mul,” Jimmy said. “You taught me that. It's like the woman in the supermarket. Not a coincidence that her husband's girlfriend is there.”
Mulheisen nodded. He didn't care about the woman in the supermarket. He got up and stepped to the door of the office, looking down the hall to see what time it was on the precinct clock. He never wore a watch. Watches died on his wrist. It was almost three o'clock. He came back and sat down. He wondered if he should tell Jimmy about the satellites. He didn't want to compromise Vito. He decided he didn't have any secrets from Jimmy, so he told him. Twice during the telling he got up to look at the clock. A half hour had passed.
“I think I better go out there,” he said.
“You think so?” Jimmy said, noncommittally.
Mulheisen dialed the number again. Another deputy answered. He got Jacky on the phone.
“She's feeding cattle,” Jacky said. “She was already late. The cattle have to be fed, the cows have to be milked, the hens have to be fed. Sally'll be done in a little bit. I'll call you.” He was curt.
“They don't seem eager to see you,” Jimmy observed.
Mulheisen frowned. “Jimmy,” he said quietly, “you aren't suggesting I shouldn't go?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Just an observation, Mul. If you want to go, go. Maybe it's relevant.”
Mul
heisen nodded. The phone rang.
“Hi Mul,” Sally said. She sounded tired, sad.
After all the “are you all right?” exchanges, Mulheisen said, “What did Mrs. Garland tell you about this woman?” He had a vague notion of Grace Garland. He had spoken to her once, he thought, perhaps twice. Sally related all that she knew. It wasn't much. Apparently, Grace Garland had gone out of her way to let Sally know that she was enjoying her visit with this relative, although the daughter denied that there was such a relative.
“Grace was really happy to have the woman for Christmas and when I met her the woman seemed all right,” Sally said. “A little excited maybe, but then she'd cut herself, torn her pants. She said she was a klutz. I figured she wasn't from around here, but she seemed friendly. She was eager for me to go in the barn and see Grace.”
There was a long silence as both Mulheisen and Sally thought about that. But Mulheisen went on to say that he was coming out there, that he would see her. He hinted about the husband—"You'll be home with the kids, I suppose?"—but Sally didn't rise to that bait. She just said she'd be home and she sure would be glad to see him.
“She killed Grace,” Sally said. She was angry. “Grace took her in, nursed her, and then she killed her. What kind of woman would do that?”
“Nursed her?” Mulheisen asked.
“That's what Grace said, when I talked to her on the phone the other day. She said the woman was feeling a little poorly but was settin’ up and taking nourishment and she'd have her out helping with the chores before you knew it. And now she's killed Grace, who never harmed a—”
“Sally, Sally . . . it's not certain—” Mulheisen tried to interject.
“They found my present lying in the snow. She waved me out of sight and then just threw Grace's Christmas scarf into the snow. She killed Grace.”
12
Late Lite
They brought Cap'n Lite into the room, two big men on each side, holding his arms firmly. They were his closest associates and he knew by the firm way they held him that this was not a good thing. If you are being ushered into an interview for, say, a new job, the ushers don't hold you firmly by the upper arm. He was bothered about his hat, a green felt Tyrolean affair that had gotten dislodged slightly in the process of entering the room, the turning and bumping. The hat was atilt and some of his bald head was exposed. It felt silly and yet he didn't think he could complain or ask them to straighten it. But it unsettled him. He'd lost hair from his treatments and while he wasn't exactly vain, he was self-conscious about it.
Also, the interview room wasn't encouraging. Cap'n Lite had been driven south from Salt Lake City for about an hour, to meet “someone big.” His associates had never mentioned such a person to him before, although they had sometimes intimated that there were higher powers somewhere, to whom they were beholden. Presumably these powers were back in Tonga—or Los Angeles, where there was another large enclave of Tongans.
The Tongans had recruited Cap'n Lite as their leader off the streets of Salt Lake City, a couple of years earlier. He hadn't been in Salt Lake City for very long, but he had gained a reputation as a man “who knew heavy people.” Well, he knew Humphrey, the Fat Man; he was heavy, all right, but it was Humphrey who had told him to take a hike, although the Cap'n had never given up hope that he'd be asked to come back. Presumably it was because of this tenuous attachment, however, that the Tongans had picked him to be their leader. Well, not leader, but more like an executive. The arrangement was informal in the extreme. These people weren't articulate, not in English, anyway. They indicated that he should get them into various kinds of illegal operations, using his boasted contacts. He felt that he had earned their trust, gradually, as was demonstrated by the substantial amounts of money they allowed him. It was a hell of a comeback for Cap'n Lite. He hadn't had access to this kind of money since he had worked for Big Sid Sedlacek, mostly in the numbers racket in Detroit, in the 1950s and ‘60s. This was much more money. He'd done well in Detroit, but he'd had to leave when his old sponsor got into trouble.
The Cadillac had turned off the highway and driven several miles on a private road before approaching a large, modern house, a spectacular house made of huge logs, with lots of stonework and lots of glass. But the Caddy hadn't stopped at the house. They had driven on past the corrals and barns for a half mile on a more bumpy road, just a dirt track winding around low hills covered with sagebrush, to an old and weathered log house of just a couple rooms. This had probably been the original homesite, perhaps a hundred years old now, but it hadn't been kept up. Cap'n Lite wasn't exactly conversant with pioneer architecture, but he had an idea that this old homestead was itself worth something, the logs probably hauled down from the low mountains nearby and roughed into this well-made structure. But his architectural musings didn't occupy him for long. He was infinitely more curious about why they were meeting the Man here, instead of at the fancy house. But there was no point in asking the guys, he knew. They were never much for talk.
There was nothing in this house. It had a dirty wooden floor with cracks between the planks through which the cold wind huffed rills of old, tired dust. The walls of the cabin were darkened by cooking smoke and there were a few tattered remains of pictures that had been thumbtacked to the logs, pictures cut from magazines that no longer existed. One of them was a Norman Rockwell cover from the Saturday Evening Post, depicting a cowboy placing a child on the back of a pony.
A chair had been placed in the middle of the room. It was a large, modern chair of steel and leather, and it had obviously been brought in to provide ease for the very large man who was sitting in it. No doubt it would be removed when he left.
The Man was not just very large, he was easily the largest man that Cap'n Lite had ever seen. He actually made Cap'n Lite's lumbering bodyguards look normal. He was probably six feet and ten or eleven inches tall and weighed as much as four hundred pounds. He had, like the bodyguards, a huge, blank placid face, reddish brown in color, but with more delicate features and more intelligent eyes. No emotion was visible on this face, though perhaps his own people could detect emotion. They seemed tense.
“Bring him closer,” the Man said. His voice was quiet, almost inaudible, but it was articulate and he spoke English easily. Still, he spoke so softly that one had to strain to hear. Cap'n Lite thought it might be part of his style: the Man didn't have to speak up; it was for others to listen intently. Cap'n Lite was chilled by the Man's manner. It portended no good thing. Tonga-heart, he thought.
“What is your name?” the Man asked, almost without interest.
When Cap'n Lite got his nerve back, he rasped out his real name: “Clarence Woods.” And when the Man asked why he went by such a foolish name as Cap'n Lite, he found that he couldn't answer. But no answer was really desired. The Man didn't care.
“You let this man Service go,” the Man said. “Why?”
“I talked to the guys,” Cap'n Lite said. “They agreed to it. He was onto some money.” He was annoyed to hear the weakness, the pleading tone in his voice.
“You weren't supposed to let him get away,” the Man said. “Now we don't know where he is.” It was said casually. The Man turned his chin slightly and rubbed an itch.
“We'll find him,” Cap'n Lite said. “We know the house where his woman went.”
“Not the blond woman,” the Man said. “She's gone. You mean the woman he told you about?”
“Right. We just watch that place and he'll show up.”
“He took the blond woman back from you. He even took her car,” the Man said, petulantly. He sighed and looked at the floor. “But that isn't the worst. You talked to the people in Detroit. You told them about Mr. Service and the money.”
Cap'n Lite was frightened now. He was also shocked. How did they know he had called Detroit? “I only wanted to find out if Joe was telling the truth. I got old friends in Detroit, friends who could find out if he was screwing us over. Hey, that's how I found out that there was mor
e money than he was telling us . . . and about the other woman. I had to find out somehow, didn't I?”
He was frankly pleading now. He hated the desperate tone, fearing that in itself it would somehow contribute to the situation. But he knew he had to get this notion across. It was no more nor less than what his life was worth. The Man's face had darkened.
“It's good to find out things,” the Man said.
Cap'n Lite was relieved. “That's all it was,” he hastened to add. “I was just trying to figure out what was going down. The way Service was talking, it was only a few hundred grand—nothing, really. But my friends back in Detroit, they tipped me off. There's a lot more. Millions! And now that Joe has split, we don't need him. Right? It's all ours. Yours. I mean, we know where the house is, where the woman took the money. So it was good I called Detroit. Right?”
“To a degree,” the Man said. He looked pensive, stroking his chin.
Cap'n Lite felt emboldened. “Well, who else could have found out for you? I mean, that's why you hired me. Right?”
The Man nodded vaguely. He was thinking of something else, it appeared. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just gazed at the dirty window, through which one could barely make out a snowy field, perhaps a hint of a distant mountain range. The Man shivered. “It's cold here,” he said. He adjusted his heavy overcoat.
“Well, yeah, it is cold.” Cap'n Lite was eager to agree. His head was cold. He wanted to say something about his hat, but it seemed an impossible subject. “Too cold. Maybe we could go back to the big house, or someplace warmer. We ought to be thinking about getting into the chick's house on Main Street, get the money. I been keeping an eye on the place, I got kids moving around there. A place like that, you don't want to rush in without you case the layout, make sure it ain't a trap, or something. Look, I got a lot to do, I . . . “
He was babbling, he knew, but he was relieved. It was going to turn out. It was good, he began to think, that he'd finally met the Big Man. It suggested that they trusted him.
The Man waved his hand to shut him up. “But now, also, these Detroit people know about the house, about our interest. They will want the money for themselves,” he said. “That isn't good.”
Dead Folks Page 18
