Assassin's Blood (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “You told me most murders that are solved are figured out inside of forty-eight hours,” I reminded him.

  “That’s true.” He seemed undisturbed.

  “And the Doug Devlin killing was never solved.”

  His heavy brows rose slightly. “Devlin, eh? You think there’s a connection?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing: We could make a lot better progress if we could interview everybody we had to. Like Mrs. Cynthia Devlin, for example. Know where she is?”

  I realized now why she didn’t like him. He was playing cat and mouse, asking questions whose answers he knew to see what response he got.

  “Is there a warrant out for her?” I asked. “Is she a suspect?”

  “Everybody’s a suspect at this point. Haven’t seen her, eh?”

  “I’m told she left town—before the murder.”

  Staples nodded. “Beautiful woman, Mrs. Devlin. But I’ve always had the feeling she didn’t like me.”

  I leaned forward in my chair.

  “Sheriff Staples, have you considered that something valuable might be buried on that property? That Clyde Fontenot may have been killed because he was about to find something that was worth a lot of money?”

  Staples waved the idea away. “I’ve heard those stories. Only thing wrong is nobody can say just what it is that’s out there.”

  “How about money somebody paid an assassin a long time ago?”

  “An assassin? To do what?”

  “To kill the president of the United States.”

  I gave him credit for not blinking. Instead, he sat quietly and listened to my theory, and when I was done, he didn’t laugh.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said.

  “You’ll look into it?”

  “What else can I say? You haven’t offered me any evidence, but it’s conceivable. Of course, after all this time, I’m damned if I know how I’d prove it.”

  I spoke quickly before I could change my mind. “Maybe I could help.”

  He cocked his head slightly, as if hearing something novel.

  “You could help?”

  “Sheriff, archaeologists help law enforcement all the time. There are lots of things archaeologists are trained to do, ways they’re trained to look at things that can shed light. If I could just see your files …”

  Staples smiled.

  “Thank you, Mr. Graham, but I don’t think so.”

  All of a sudden I felt very foolish.

  I left his office with the distinct impression that I’d made a fool of myself, and maybe if I hadn’t been so concerned about it, I would have noticed sooner that the gray car was back.

  I saw him two miles west of town. At first he was just a dot in my mirror, and then he picked up until he was a hundred yards back. When I slowed, he slowed, too.

  For a few seconds I thought of gunning my engine and trying to lose him, and then I realized it would be useless, because he could easily outrace the Blazer.

  I slowed for Jackson, hoping the gray car would turn off. But instead it hung back just far enough to keep me in view. Without thinking, I floored the accelerator, hoping to surprise him, but it was useless. He caught up in a few seconds.

  Ahead was the traffic light where Highway 68 entered from the south. There was nowhere to hide on 68, and I shot through the green, then slowed for town. Just ahead was the place where Highway 952 joined this road, heading north toward Mississippi. My mind raced ahead to the turnoff to our survey area. It was just three miles, and there was a curve shortly before it.

  I wheeled into a hard right turn and started north along the narrow blacktop, passing the museum and the Chamber of Commerce and the ruins of Centenary College. The car behind me began to close up the distance between us.

  Of course I’d played it all wrong: I should have called the State Police on the cellular. That’s what I told myself now, anyway, but secretly I’d been worried they’d treat me the way Staples just had.

  And whoever was in the car was just following. There was no danger in that.

  I looked in my mirror and saw him now five car lengths behind.

  But what if he wasn’t just following me? What if he was searching for a place to force me off the road, kill me?

  Then Providence asserted itself in the form of a mower crawling up the road ahead of me at the sedate speed of fifteen miles an hour. The driver, a boy of sixteen or so, did his best to keep the tractor to the right-hand side, but as he went, his towed blades scythed back and forth like a worm, periodically cutting into the oncoming lane.

  I closed to a few yards behind him and then whipped around, taking the left shoulder in a cloud of dust. I heard a horn in the distance as my pursuer tried to force the machine from the road, but by now I was almost to the turnoff into the survey area. I stomped on my brakes and guided the Blazer out of the skid. Then I veered left onto the dirt track, hoping the dust would settle before the gray car got here. I bumped over the track, knowing I could make better speed over the ruts than he could, and came to the iron gate. I dismounted quickly, opened it, and drove through. Then, leaving my motor running, I jumped out again and closed it behind me. I went another mile, wondering if he’d figured out yet where I’d turned. If he had, he could only get as far as the gate, and I was hoping that when he got to that point and saw it locked, he’d figure he’d made a mistake, that I hadn’t come in here at all.

  Our staging area was ahead, and I stopped the vehicle and got out. I walked to the end of the road, to where the valley dipped down toward the creek. The deer stand was to my right, and I decided to go up for a better view of the trail.

  The wooden rungs bent under my weight, and when I got to the square hole that was the entrance to the bottom of the compartment, I reached up to grab a handhold and felt the board give slightly.

  I took a deep breath and heaved myself up into the wooden box and looked over the top of the wooden wall at the countryside.

  It was a nice view, all green but for a few brown patches that were clearings, and the friendly, glistening ribbon that was the creek snaking its way through at the bottom. I shifted my weight to the other side and looked through the opening at the way I had come.

  I didn’t know why I was worried. There was no way to get through the gate.

  I’d just wait here an hour or so and then drive out. I was already congratulating myself on having fooled my follower when there was movement through the bushes and I saw someone coming down the trail.

  He wore olive camouflage, and a bush hat shaded his face. He moved lightly, like a professional stalker, and a shiver went down my spine. All my brilliance had only gotten me deeper into trouble.

  The man halted twenty steps behind my vehicle, and I squinted, trying to make out his features, but he was still too far away. He seemed to be considering what course to take, and after a few seconds he made up his mind, for I saw him come around the Blazer stopping ten yards from me. I sucked myself back into the darkness of the deer stand, hoping he wouldn’t think to look up here. For an eternal five seconds my heart was the loudest sound in my ears, then I heard his footsteps crunching the twigs. As I listened, the sounds grew fainter, and I chanced a look.

  He was going back the way he had come, as if he’d seen whatever he needed.

  I didn’t like it at all.

  Because in the instant before I’d jerked my body back into the shadows, I’d gotten a glimpse of his face, and it was one I knew.

  It was the face of Colonel Buck Devlin.

  I waited until I was sure he was gone and then decided to count to a hundred, just in case. My eyes went around the bare board walls and then across the roof, and I saw the roof was actually a flat board platform with hinges at the back. I pushed upward with my hand, and it moved. I pushed the rest of the way up, and the roof rotated upward, allowing me to stand. At the same time there was a sliding sound, followed by a clatter and crash. Something had fallen from the roof t
o the ground. I looked over the side and drew a deep breath.

  For there below on the ground was the strange machine that Clyde Fontenot had been working on the last day I saw him alive.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I clambered down the ladder to where the odd instrument lay on the ground. There was no doubt about it. It was a metal detector. Clyde figured whoever would bury paper money would protect it with a moisture-proof metal box and his machine would detect the box underground. Of course, the detector’s accuracy would depend on a lot of things, such as how deeply the box was buried—the car battery suggested Fontenot expected quite a hole. And maybe the thing wouldn’t work at all.

  But whether it actually worked was beside the point. Its significance was that if Clyde had carried it the morning he was killed, it was probable that his murderer had killed him here, stashed the machine where he figured no one would find it, and then carried—or dragged—Clyde’s body down to the creek.

  I tried to think of what this added to the investigation, but nothing came through for the moment. I picked up the detector, masking my fingerprints with a handkerchief, and with the apparatus under one arm, I climbed back up the ladder and into the deer stand. Then I lowered the roof and, reaching out over the side with both hands, managed to stash the instrument back on the top.

  Something was telling me to leave it where it was for now.

  I looked out over the valley again and found myself wondering if the killer hadn’t waited up here with a rifle until Clyde had walked by below.

  Ten minutes later I was back on the blacktop and there was no sign of the gray Plymouth.

  When I got back to my house, the light on my answering machine was blinking. Cyn’s voice told me she hoped I’d made it home all right, and she left the number of the motel. I thought about Buck Devlin and hoped he hadn’t beaten me home and checked my messages.

  But I didn’t think he’d had enough time. Still, there was no sense in taking anything for granted. Buck was clever and had learned things in the Army. If he’d been the one who’d broken into the office and shot Meg, it was a rare slipup because, judging from the burglary of my house, which it seemed reasonable to attribute to him, he specialized in stealth. I turned things over in my mind and then went up the steps to my parents’ room. Everything was as I’d left it, the small photograph still slightly out of place, the closet door cracked open. I went to the closet then and rooted through the shoe boxes on the floor. When I found the one I wanted, I brought it out and took it over to the bed.

  It was bound with string, the same string my father had tied it with when I was in high school, the same string that I had retied after I’d peeked into the box one day when he wasn’t home.

  I broke the rotten string and lifted off the box top. I rifled through some oily rags and lifted out the object inside.

  It was an ancient Colt revolver, .32 caliber, the kind people used to keep around the house. I never knew what my father had wanted with it because there were few burglaries in those days, but I remembered him putting the shoe box in the car when we’d take long rides in the country, and once he had taken me out south of town to the levee and we’d shot at tin cans. I opened the action and spun the cylinder the same way I had that day when I was sixteen years old. The chambers were empty and the mechanism smelled of oil. I left the box on the bed and went back to the closet, standing on my tiptoes to reach far back on the shelf.

  The case of cartridges was still there. There were twelve of them left, and I realized we’d fired the remainder that day long ago. The brass of the cartridges was green, and there was no way of knowing how well they’d work now. I put the box in my pocket and stuck the gun in my waistband under my shirt. I felt foolish. What was a middle-aged archaeologist going to accomplish with an ancient handgun that had never been much of a defensive weapon, anyway?

  I put the gun and cartridges in the glove compartment of the Blazer and drove to a pay phone in the LSU Union building. If he had my office and home lines covered or had some way of picking up my cellular transmission, a pay phone was best. I called Cyn and she answered on the second ring.

  “So what’s happening down there?” she asked. “I didn’t want to call your office but I’ve been on pins and needles.”

  “The answer is nothing,” I said. It didn’t make any sense telling her about Buck. That would come soon enough.

  “I was thinking of coming home tonight.”

  “Better stay another couple of days. Let a few more things fall into place.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  I told her about my lunch with the McNairs. “They’re ambitious men with a lot of power. I’d hate to have them raking up your past.”

  I didn’t say anything about the two sheriffs who wanted to talk to her. After all, if she didn’t know they wanted to question her, she wasn’t obstructing justice by not appearing at their offices.

  “You really think I shouldn’t come?” she asked, and I wondered if it was hurt I was hearing in her voice.

  “That’s what I think,” I said. “You need to stay out of the way until this cools off.”

  I didn’t tell her my other reason, which was that I wasn’t sure I could trust myself with her a third time.

  When I’d hung up, I stood there in the lobby for a long minute, with students walking back and forth past me, trying to decide what to do. If things were left in the hands of Staples and Cooney, they’d pull against each other like two kids with their fingers in a Chinese puzzle. The only way to solve this was for me to do something.

  In desperation I went to the snack bar, hoping a Dr. Pepper would stimulate a few thoughts. As I went to pay, something fell out of my wallet and fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up.

  S. Norman Lawrence III, Assistant General Counsel, General Accounting Office.

  He’d offered to do anything he could.

  I dialed the number on the card and waited. It was nearly four-thirty here, which meant it was five-thirty in the East. The office was probably closed.

  But to my surprise the phone was answered after one ring, and I heard a woman’s voice, crisp and businesslike.

  “Mr. Lawrence’s office.”

  I told her my name. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Lawrence, please.”

  “I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting.”

  “Could you please leave a message? I’m a friend of his daughter’s. He told me to call him at this number if I needed help. In fact, he insisted.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll leave a message.”

  “Can you tell me when he’ll call back?”

  “Well, I can’t say, Mr. Graham. I …”

  There was the muffled sound of voices at the other end of the line, a few clicks, and then I heard Norman Lawrence speaking.

  “Dr. Graham? Is that you? I was just going by my desk and heard your name.”

  “Mr. Lawrence, I need your help.”

  “Oh?”

  I told him about the murder of Clyde Fontenot.

  “It was on the parish line, and two sheriffs are fighting each other over it, just like they did with Doug Devlin last year. And the State Police seem to just want to leave it alone.”

  “Politics and bureaucracy.” He chuckled gently. “Seems like I’ve heard that song before. Well, it isn’t a federal crime—I don’t see how we could request the FBI.”

  I thought of Jack Kennedy’s grave in Arlington, not more than a couple of miles from where Norman Lawrence was now, but I decided to keep quiet about that. I’d look like a crank if I brought it up.

  “Now, if there were drugs involved, we could bring in the DEA,” he suggested. “And for something being smuggled in from outside the country, there’s Customs. I don’t guess there’s a federal fugitive so we could bring in the Marshals’ Service?”

  He was giving me information I already had, and I sensed he considered my phone call a waste of his time, though he was trying hard to hide it.

  “There’s something else you can do
,” I said. “If you have the contacts.”

  “What’s that?” There was a note of caution in his voice.

  “I need to get some files from the Pentagon.”

  “Files from who?” Now he really thought I was crazy.

  I told him about Buck Devlin and how I’d been followed.

  “I’d like to know where he was when his brother was killed and what kind of assignments he got in the Army.”

  “You suspect him?”

  “He seems to be capable.”

  “But why would he want to kill his brother or that other man?”

  “I don’t know. It may have something to do with something that happened a long time ago.”

  “Such as?”

  “A conspiracy. I don’t want to say more, because I don’t have any proof. In fact, it’s so old there may not be anybody left to prosecute.”

  “Alan …” For the first time his voice was fatherly. “I’ve talked to Meg about some of this. Does this have anything to do with that Oswald story?”

  I hesitated and then answered, “Yes.”

  I heard him blow out through his teeth.

  “Jesus. And if it’s Oswald, then it’s Kennedy.”

  “Yes.

  “Oh, my God.” There was a long silence, and when he spoke again I could barely hear him. “You know, I met him once.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I met Jack Kennedy. I was new in Washington, and he made a tour of the place where I was working. I was just a law clerk. But he stopped and talked to me for a few seconds. I never forgot.”

  It was a long time before he spoke again.

  “There are some people I know at the Pentagon. Give me the specifics, and I’ll try to get the information you want.”

  “Thanks. But that’s not all. Is there any way you could get me access to Sheriff Staples’s files on this case?”

  “My Lord, you want a lot. Well …” He seemed to be thinking. “What do you know about Staples? Is he a local boy?”

  “I just know he used to be with DEA.”

  “DEA. Hmmmm. Well, that’s a start. I’ll see what I can do. Give me a day or so.”