"I know the resident manager. Delbert Knapp."
"Can you find out from him where Mildred Mead has been cashing her mortgage checks?"
"I guess I can try."
"You can do better than try, Mr. Biemeyer. I hate to press you, but this could be a matter of life or death."
"Whose death? Mildred's?"
"Possibly. But I'm more immediately concerned with Betty Siddon. I'm trying to trace her through Mildred. Will you get in touch with Delbert Knapp?"
"I may not be able to do it tonight. He wouldn't have the information at home with him, anyway."
"What about Mildred's local contacts? Can you help me with those?"
"I'll think about it. But you understand I don't want my name in the paper. I don't want my name mentioned at all in connection with Mildred. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I like the whole idea of getting involved."
"A woman's life may be at stake."
"People die every day," he said.
I stood up and spoke down to him. "I got your daughter back. Now I want some help from you. And if I don't get it, and something happens to Miss Siddon, I'll fix you."
"That sounds like a threat."
"It is. There's enough crap in your life to make you fixable."
"But I'm your client."
"Your wife is."
My voice sounded calm in my ears, a little distant. But my eyes felt as if they had shrunk, and I was shaking.
"You must be crazy," he said. "I could buy and sell you."
"I'm not for sale. Anyway, that's just talk. You may have money, but you're too tight to use it. The other day you were bellyaching about five hundred measly bucks to get your daughter back. Half the time you're the king of the world, and the other half you talk like poor white trash."
He stood up. "I'm going to report you to Sacramento for threatening to blackmail me. You're going to regret this for the rest of your life."
I was already regretting it. But I was too angry to try to conciliate him. I walked out of the study and headed for the front door.
Mrs. Biemeyer caught me before I reached it. "You shouldn't have said what you did."
"I know that. I'm sorry. May I use your phone, Mrs. Biemeyer?"
"Don't call the police, will you? I don't want them here."
"No. I'm just calling a friend."
She led me into the huge bricked kitchen, seated me at a table by the window, and brought me a telephone on a long cord. The window overlooked the distant harbor. Closer, near the foot of the hill, the Chantry house had lights on in it. While I was dialing the number Fay Brighton had given me, I took a second, longer look and saw that some of the lights were in the greenhouse.
I got a busy signal, and dialed again.
This time Mrs. Brighton answered on the first ring: "Hello?"
"This is Archer speaking. Have you had any luck?"
"Yes, sir, but all of it was bad. The trouble is that a whole lot of the people sound suspicious. It may be something in _my_ voice that does it to them. I'm sort of scared sitting here by myself, you know. And I don't seem to be accomplishing anything."
"How far down the list are you?"
"Maybe halfway. But I feel that I'm not accomplishing anything. Is it all right with you if I quit for the night?"
I didn't answer her right away. Before I did, she let out an apologetic snuffling sob and hung up.
XXX
I switched off the kitchen lights and took another look at the Chantry place. There were definitely movements in the greenhouse. But I couldn't make out their significance.
I went out to the car for my binoculars, and ran into Ruth Biemeyer for the second time.
"Have you seen Doris?" she said. "I'm getting a little concerned about her."
She was more than a little concerned. Her voice was thin. Her eyes were dark and craterous in the brilliant outside lights. I said, "Has Doris left the house?"
"I'm afraid she has, unless she's hiding somewhere. She may have run away with Fred Johnson."
"How could she? Fred's in jail."
"He was," she said. "But my lawyer got him out today. I'm afraid I made a mistake. Please don't tell Jack about it, will you? He'd never let me forget it."
She was a woman in trouble, sinking still deeper into trouble. She had lost her poise and started to lose her hope.
"I'll tell your husband what I have to-no more. Where is Fred? I want to talk to him."
"We dropped him off at his parents' home. I'm afraid it wasn't a good idea, was it?"
"It isn't a good idea," I said, "for you and me to be standing here with all the outside lights on. There's something funny going on at the Chantry place."
"I know there is. It's been going on a good part of the day. Today they were cutting down weeds in there. Tonight they've been digging a hole."
"What kind of a hole?"
"Go and look for yourself. They're still at it."
I went down the driveway to the edge of the slope, where the wire fence stopped me. The lights went out behind me. I leaned on the fence and focused my binoculars on the greenhouse. A dark man and a woman with shining gray hair-Rico and Mrs. Chantry-were working inside the building. They seemed to be filling in a hole with shovels, using a pile of dirt that stood between them.
Rico slid down into the half-filled hole and jumped up and down, packing the loose dirt. He appeared to be sinking upright into the earth, like a damned soul sinking into hell by his own volition. Mrs. Chantry stood and watched him.
I caught her face in my binoculars. She looked rosy and rough and dangerous. There was dirt on her face, and her hair curved like glistening gray hawk wings over her temples.
She reached a hand down to Rico and helped him out of the hole. They teetered together on its edge and then returned to their task of filling it in. The earth fell soundlessly from their spades.
A black thought bit at the edge of my mind and gradually eclipsed it. The people in the greenhouse had dug a grave and now they were filling it in. It didn't seem quite possible. But if it was, then it was possible that Betty Siddon's body was under the dirt.
I went back to the car for my gun and had it in my hand when Ruth Biemeyer said behind me, "What are you planning to do with that?"
"I want to know what's happening down there."
"For God's sake, don't take a gun with you. So many innocent people get shot. And I still haven't found my daughter."
I didn't argue. But I slipped the gun, a medium-caliber automatic, into my jacket pocket. I went back to the fence and climbed over it and started down the slope to the barranca. It had been planted and overgrown with succulent plants that felt rubbery under my feet.
Farther down, the succulents gave way to sage and other native bushes. Nestled among the bushes, like a giant golden egg, was a girl's blond head. Doris was crouched there, watching what was going on in the greenhouse.
"Doris?" I said. "Don't be scared."
But she jumped like a fawn and went crashing down the slope. I caught her and told her to be quiet. She was trembling and breathing hard. Her body kept making unwilled or half-willed movements, trying to jerk away from me. I held her with both arms around her shoulders.
"Don't be afraid, Doris. I won't hurt you."
"You're hurting me now. Let me go."
"I will if you promise to stay where you are and keep quiet."
The girl quieted down a bit, but I could still hear her breathing.
The couple in the greenhouse had stopped filling in the hole and were standing together in listening attitudes. Their eyes ranged up the dark hillside. I got down among the sagebrush and pulled Doris down with me. After a long tense minute, the people in the greenhouse resumed their work. It looked like gravediggers' work.
"Did you see what they were burying, Doris?"
"No, I didn't. It was already covered when I got here."
"What brought you here?"
"I saw the light in the greenhouse; then I came do
wn the hill and saw the big pile of dirt. Do you think they're burying a body?"
There was awe in her voice. There was also familiarity, as if her nightmares were coming true at last. "I don't know," I said.
We moved across the slope to the corner of the wire fence and along it to her parents' driveway. Ruth Biemeyer was waiting at the top.
"What do you think we ought to do?" she said.
"I'll phone Captain Mackendrick."
She left me in the kitchen. I kept my eye on the greenhouse through the window. All I could see was barred light crossed by occasional shadows.
Mackendrick wasn't in his office, and the police operator couldn't locate him right away. I had time to remember that he had known Chantry when he was a young cop, and to wonder if he was going to see him again shortly.
I got Mackendrick at home. His phone-was answered by a woman with a semi-official voice who sounded both impatient and resigned. After a certain amount of explanation, I persuaded her to let me talk to her husband. I told him what was happening in the greenhouse.
"Digging in your own greenhouse isn't a crime," he said. "I can't do anything about it officially. Hell, they could sue the city."
"Not if they buried a body."
"Did you see them bury a body?"
"No."
"Then what do you expect me to do?"
"Think about it," I said. "People don't dig grave-sized holes and fill them up just for the fun of it."
"You'd be surprised at what they do. Maybe they're looking for something."
"Such as?"
"A leaky water main. I've seen people dig up a whole yard looking for a water pipe with a hole in it."
"People like Mrs. Chantry?"
He was slow in answering. "I don't think we better continue this conversation. If you decide to take any action, I don't want to know about it."
"There's something else you don't want to know about," I said. "But I want to tell you."
Mackendrick sighed, or grunted. "Make it fast, eh? I've got a lot on my agenda, and it's late."
"You know a young woman named Betty Siddon."
"That I do. She's been in my hair."
"You haven't seen her tonight, have you?"
"No."
"She seems to be missing."
"What does that mean?"
"She's dropped out of sight. I haven't been able to contact her."
"For how long?"
"Several hours."
Mackendrick shouted at me, in a voice that was half angry and half jocose, "For God's sake, that doesn't mean anything. If she'd been gone for a week or two, you might say she was missing."
"Let's wait twenty years," I said. "Then we'll all be dead."
My voice sounded strange in my own ears, high and angry.
Mackendrick lowered his voice, as if to set me an example. "What's the trouble, Archer, are you stuck on the girl or something?"
"I'm worried about her."
"Okay, I'll tell my people to be on the lookout for her. Good night."
I sat with the dead receiver in my hand, feeling an angry pain that I had felt before. I lived at the intersection of two worlds. One was the actual world where danger was seldom far from people's lives, where reality threatened them with its cutting edge. The other was the world where Mackendrick had to operate in a maze of tradition and a grid of rules-a world where nothing officially happened until it was reported through channels.
From where I sat in the dark kitchen, I could see the grave-diggers putting the final touches to the hole they had filled in. They seemed to be gathering up armfuls of cuttings and scattering them over the raw dirt. Finally Rico picked up a brown sack, swung it over his shoulder, and carried it out to a car standing in the courtyard. He opened the trunk of the car and slung the brown sack in.
Mrs. Chantry turned out the lights in the greenhouse and followed Rico into the main house.
I went out to my car and drove it down the hill, parking just around the corner from Mrs. Chantry's street. Though the movements of the night and its people were far beyond the range of my understanding, I was beginning to pick up some of the smaller rhythms. In less than fifteen minutes, there was a glow of headlights from the direction of the Chantry house.
The Chantry car, with Rico driving alone in the front seat, passed me and turned toward the freeway.
I followed at a distance, but close enough to see him enter the northbound lane. There was fairly heavy traffic at this mid-evening hour, crawling like an endless luminescent worm into the tunneled darkness. We passed the university's lighted towers, the crowded buildings of the student annex where I had first met Doris, the narrow entrance to the dark beach where Jake Whitmore's body had been found.
Rico stayed on the freeway, and so did I. The traffic was dwindling down to its intercity components, trucks and night-driving tourists and the like. I let the distance between us lengthen out, and almost lost him. He made an unexpected right turn off the freeway, then a quick left through an underpass. I left the highway and waited out of sight for a minute, then followed him down to the sea with my car lights out.
The object of his journey was a wooden pier that extended out over the water for a couple of hundred yards. Three or four miles beyond the end of the pier, a half-dozen oil platforms blazed with lights like leafless Christmas trees. And off to the north, like a menacing West Coast Statue of Liberty, a giant gas flame flared.
Against the several lights I could see Rico approaching the foot of the pier, hunchbacked by the sack he had slung across his shoulder. I left my car and followed him on foot, walking softly and narrowing my distance. By the time Rico had reached the seaward end, I was close behind him.
"Drop it, Rico," I said. "Get your hands up." He made a move to heave the sack overside. It struck the top rail and fell clanking on the deck of the pier. Rico turned on me swinging. I moved inside his flailing arms and hit him several times in the belly, then once on the jaw. He went down and stayed for a while. I searched his clothes. No gun.
I untied the twine that closed the mouth of his sack, and spilled some of its contents on the planking. There were human bones caked with dirt, a damaged human skull, rusted engine parts from an old car. Rico sighed and rolled over. Then he was on me, heavy and strong but dull in his reactions. His head swung loose and undefended. I didn't hit him again. I backed away and got out my gun and told him to calm down.
Instead he turned and ran staggering to the outer end of the pier. He started to climb over the railing, or try to. His feet kept slipping. The tide was low and the water was a long way down.
For some reason, it became important to me that Rico shouldn't make it into the black water. I pocketed my gun and got my arms around his waist. Dragged him back onto the deck and held him down.
As I marched Rico back to my car and got him safely inside of it, I understood one source of my satisfaction. Twenty-odd years ago, near an oil-stained pier like this, I had fought in the water with a man named Puddler and drowned him.
Rico, whatever his sins, had served as an equalizer for one of mine.
XXXI
Captain Mackendrick was glad to see Rico, too. The three of us convened in Mackendrick's office with a male police stenotypist ready to record what was said. Rico didn't say anything at all until we brought in the sack of bones and iron. Mackendrick held it up in front of Rico's face and shook it. It made a strange dull clatter.
Mackendrick brought out the damaged skull and placed it on his desk. It looked empty-eyed at Rico. Rico returned the stare for a long moment. He tried to wet his lips with his dry tongue. Then he tried to scratch his head, but his fingers got tangled in the bandages he was now wearing.
"You used to be a pretty good young fellow," Mackendrick said. "I remember when you used to play volleyball on the beach, you liked good clean sport. You liked good clean work-mowing the lawn, washing the car. You thought Mr. Chantry was the greatest boss a young fellow ever had. You said so to me, remember?"
> Tears had begun to roll from Rico's eyes and find twin downward channels on either side of his nose.
He said, "I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for, Rico? Did you kill him?"
He shook his head, and the tears flew out from his face. "I don't even know who he is."
"Then why did you dig up his poor bones and try to get rid of them?"
"I don't know."
"You mean you do things without knowing why?"
"Sometimes. When people tell me."
"Who told you to get rid of these bones, weight them with iron, and chunk them in the sea? Who told you to do that?" Mackendrick said.
"I don't remember."
"Was it your own idea?"
The man recoiled from the suggestion. "No."
"Whose idea was it?"
Rico stared into the empty eyes of the skull. His face became even more sober, as if he had looked into a mirror and recognized his own mortal condition. He raised his hands and touched his cheeks with his fingertips, feeling the skull behind them.
"Is this Mr. Richard Chantry's skull?" Mackendrick said. "I don't know. Honest to God, I don't know."
"What do you know?"
He looked at the floor. "Nothing much. I always was a dumbhead."
"That's true, but not that dumb. You used to look out for yourself in the old days, Rico. You went for the girls, but you didn't let them lead you around by the nose. You didn't go out and commit a crime because a woman jiggled her hips at you. You used to have more sense than to do that."
The stenotypist's fingertips danced a rapid minuet on the keys of his machine. Rico was watching them as if they were miming a dance of death, telling his past or perhaps foretelling his future. His mouth opened and closed several times in an effort to find words. Then he began to whisper to himself, too low to be heard.
Mackendrick leaned forward, speaking quietly: "What did you say, Rico? Speak up, man, it may be important."
Rico nodded. "It is important. I had nothing to do with it."
"Nothing to do with the murder, you mean?"
"That's right. It was all her doing. My conscience is clear on that. She told me to bury him, which I did. Then twenty-five years later she told me to dig him up. That's all I did."
The Blue Hammer Page 17
