by Jack Lynch
I left her in the reception area for a moment while I tracked down Findley. He’d arranged for us to use an interview room just down the hall. I told him I thought I’d established a pretty good rapport with Aggie the day before, and I preferred trying to talk her into doing what we wanted by myself. Then, I told him, if she went along with it, I thought Aggie should be given a chance to speak to Buddy Bancetti alone. If he confirmed Angel’s story to Aggie, then we could go in and hope the boy would repeat it for us. The sergeant, like me, was more interested in results than in protocol. He went along with it.
When Aggie and I were seated at a table in the interview room, I told her about seeing Angel that morning and how she had dragooned me into the picnic. Aggie watched me with a little smirk during that part of my story. Then I repeated in detail Angel’s story of seeing her sister and Buddy out on the island the day Cornell was killed. It sobered her up and she sat in silence.
“I believed her, Aggie. It was hard for her to tell me about it. I think she had a soft spot of her own for Buddy.”
That surprised her. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “She told you that?”
“Not in so many words. But she indicated she and Buddy used to talk some. She didn’t mean there was anything overt between them. I think she liked him some, though. That they might have been friends if some of the things around town had been a little different. But it helps explain why she felt a little hurt when she saw her sister with Buddy. Then later, it bothered her more when her sister didn’t say anything about being with Buddy, especially after the Cornell death became known and some of Buddy’s personal things were found at the murder scene. She was aware that her sister must have had something to do with getting them there, if Buddy’s story was true and he hadn’t been at the Cornell place himself that day. It frightened her. That’s why she told me about it.”
Aggie sat very still. “Have you talked to Liz?”
“Not yet. Sergeant Findley and I were out at their place just before I phoned you. Nobody was home. But Angel’s story makes sense. It explains Buddy’s peculiar behavior, his refusal to tell even you where he was. Especially you, maybe. Shame, guilt, remorse. No matter what might have gone on between the two of them out on that island.”
“Well,” she said quietly after a moment. “And I’m supposed to just waltz in and babble about all this to Buddy?”
“Be patient, there’s more to it. It gets much worse. But tell me, are you jealous?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I mean, I don’t know…” She got up from the table and turned away from me. “Maybe it’s a good thing if they were together. Maybe it was a little breakthrough in his own growing-up process. I just find it hard to believe. I mean, I can see why Buddy wouldn’t want to tell anybody.” She turned back to me. “I don’t understand about Liz, though. Her not saying anything after Buddy was arrested.”
“This is where it gets a little grim,” I told her. “Liz Reynolds is an older woman. Old enough to keep her own council, especially if somebody asked her to. Angel also told me her sister had a boyfriend nobody knew about. She didn’t know who he was, just that he’s a married man.”
The girl gaped at me. “Old strait-laced, busy-as-a-little-bee Liz Reynolds?”
“That’s what her sister said. And remember, Angel was frightened by all this. It suggests that Liz’s boyfriend could have been involved in Cornell’s death, and that Liz helped plant the evidence that made Buddy a suspect as the killer.”
The expressions that crossed Aggie’s face showed disbelief, acceptance and bewilderment. I felt the same way.
“But why?” Aggie asked finally.
“I don’t know. I’m sure Buddy doesn’t know. But if you could get him to acknowledge what he was doing that afternoon, first to you, then to me and Sergeant Findley, we’ll be well down the road to getting him out of here.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We’re pretty close, but I don’t know. I guess I have to try, though.”
“I hoped that you would, but there’s one other thing I have to tell you before you try. There’s been another killing.”
“Here? In Claireborn?”
“Out at the lake. That’s what’s wrong with my leg. Somebody up in the hills with a rifle shot a bullet through it just as we were coming to shore after the picnic.”
“But you said…” She leaned forward. “You don’t mean Angel?”
“I’m afraid so. She stood up in the back of the boat just as the first shot was fired. I don’t think she knew what happened, though. I think she died instantly.”
Aggie studied me with a stark expression, then lowered her head. When I saw the tears on her face, I got up and hobbled around some, looking away from her. When I heard her blowing into a tissue I went back and sat down again.
“I’m sorry,” she told me.
“Don’t be.”
“Angel—we were never friends, really. But she was just a kid, still.”
“I know. That’s why anything you can get Buddy to say is so important. Who knows what could happen next? And Angel, after all, was a part of this community, no matter what some people might have thought about her. A part of the community in a way I suspect Cornell never was.”
Aggie took a final dab at her nose and nodded. “You’re right. When do I get to see Buddy?”
“Right away.” I got up and limped over to the door. Windows opened onto the hallway outside so deputies could keep an eye on things if necessary. Findley had Buddy Bancetti waiting on a bench a little ways down the corridor. I opened the door and motioned to them.
Buddy blinked in surprise when he saw who was in the room. “Aggie?”
“Hi, Buddy,” she said, getting to her feet and trying to smile.
“Go on in, boy,” Findley told him. “She wants to talk to you. Mr. Bragg and I will wait outside here.”
The boy went in and sat down awkwardly. I closed the door. Through the glass I saw Aggie start to say something, then I guess she thought about Angel again. Her face was all screwed up and she hid it behind her hands. Buddy jerked up out of his chair and reached one hand across the table to try to comfort her. Findley and I took a little walk down the hall.
It took about fifteen minutes. Aggie finally opened the door and called to us. She looked drained and her shoulders sagged, but she’d done what neither of us could have done.
“He’ll tell you now,” she said quietly.
The sergeant had a tape recorder. He pulled up a chair near the boy, placed the recorder in front of him and turned it on. I hung back by the door.
“All right, son, why don’t you tell us about that day?”
The boy nodded and began to talk. It wasn’t easy for him. He stared at the tabletop with a glazed expression; sweat glistened on his forehead. He told us he’d been home that afternoon. Liz had come by the house and, with an awful similarity to my own experience with Angel, had asked him if he’d like to go out to the island for a picnic.
Once Aggie saw the boy was going to tell us, she got out of her chair and crossed to ask me in a quiet voice if she could wait outside. I gave her arm a little squeeze and opened the door for her.
With Findley’s questioning, the boy spoke for about twenty minutes. Liz had a picnic basket in the car with her, the boy said. He had always associated her with the adult community, but somebody who’d always been kind enough to him. She’d told him she just wanted some company. And according to Buddy, they’d spent a long afternoon out on the island. Liz also had brought along a couple of bottles of wine and some beer, and Buddy said he’d gotten into a kind of giggly, forgetful state, which is why he’d forgotten about his undershorts. After their swim, he said, he’d gone behind some bushes to take off the shorts and put his pants back on. He spread the shorts out on a rock to dry and during the rest of the afternoon of wine and talk and whatever else went on, he’d forgotten about them. He didn’t know what might have happened to his wallet, he was having too much fun living it up
. I had a feeling the boy might have gotten laid that afternoon.
They had apparently used the same rowboat Angel and I had been in. They finally gathered up things and rowed back to shore. One thing Buddy told us that got the attention of Findley and me was that Liz drove the long way back to town, up around the end of the lake and down the side where the Cornell place was. Buddy hadn’t minded, he told us. He was in a state of mild euphoria and even dozed some on the way back to town. It meant Liz could easily have tossed out the boy’s wallet and shorts as she drove past the murder scene and the boy issued beery snores beside her.
Findley asked him why he hadn’t told the story before. Buddy Bancetti did a lot of sighing and worked his mouth and gulped a few times, but between grunts and whistles he managed to convey what I’d suspected. He basically was ashamed of the fact that he either had, or had come mighty close to having, as we used to say, carnal knowledge of a woman out on the island in the lake on a lazy Sunday afternoon mixed with beer and playing in the water and walking hand in hand. Or maybe the better way to look at it was that Liz had carnal knowledge of this half-formed, dopey boy, because somehow, between the time of their swim in the lake and when she drove past the Cornell place, she had managed to get some of Buddy’s sperm onto the shorts which then were planted next to J. D.’s body.
When the boy was finished, he was ushered back upstairs to his quarters by a jail deputy, and I told Findley I’d be checking in with him later. Aggie said she didn’t want to go home just then. She was in a silent mood. I drove her back to her girlfriend’s house where I’d picked her up. When I pulled up in front she started to get out.
“Aggie? I’d like you to leave word for me where you’ll be at the rest of the day.”
“What for?”
She wasn’t in a happy mood and she was getting a little tired of me. “I’m still trying to get enough information together to free Buddy. If I do get him out, I’ll want him to go down to where his brother is holding those people hostage. Things might go a lot easier if you came along and, you know, sort of held his hand, or whatever.”
“I don’t know if I’d want to do that anymore.”
“Aggie,” I said sharply, “I need you.”
I didn’t accomplish much by barking at her. Her face just screwed up as if she were going to cry some more. She slammed the door and ran up the walk to her friend’s house. Her friend had heard us drive up and had opened the front door. She was a tall, serious and sensible-looking girl who gave the impression she could be a pretty good friend when one was needed. She took Aggie in her arms, then led her inside, looking over her shoulder to give me a look that could have frozen flowing lava.
Things were beginning to feel about normal for this stage of any piece of work I’d ever been involved in. I was starting to get information and people were beginning to dislike me. I drove back into town and looked for a place that was open that might sell aspirin to make the searing tingle in my leg go away.
FOURTEEN
I bought aspirin at the 7-11 market then drove to the busy intersection where we’d left Angel’s car. There weren’t as many youngsters there now, but the car was parked where she’d left it, and when I went into the cafe on the corner, the girl she’d given the car keys to was in a booth with a couple of friends. The girl with the keys saw me and looked out the window as if expecting to see Angel. I ordered a Coke at the counter and used it to down a few of the aspirin, then crossed to the booth and asked if they knew where Angel’s sister might be. Heads shook no. They wanted to ask questions, but I got out of there before one of them screwed up the nerve. I drove over a couple of blocks to the three-story building of brick and concrete squeezed in between a pizza parlor and a dry goods store and rode the world’s slowest elevator up to the third floor where old Clayton “not a hunter but a trapper” Wilstock maintained his law offices. It was like rolling another stone up to the top of the Pyramids, getting to that third floor.
Once there I went down the dazzlingly cheery hallway to the law office and tried the door. It was locked, as it should have been on a Sunday afternoon. I stared at the lock, but couldn’t tell much about it. I’m no locksmith. I know a little bit about cars and airplanes, but locks befuddle me. A cop I know once gave me a set of little lock-picking tools he said used to be issued to OSS agents in World War II. I’d tried using them just one time. All I managed to do was to break off the ends of two of the little devices. Now they were in the back of a drawer somewhere in my apartment in Sausalito. That’s how it was with me and locks. I hobbled over to the window at the end of the corridor with the fire escape sign over it. I opened the window. The fire escape went down, not around the corner to a window opening into lawyer Wilstock’s office. What did go around the corner was a ledge about eight inches wide. On my best day, with bears and cannibals chasing me, I might have tried stepping out on that tiny little ledge to creepy-toe my way around the corner to a window that probably was locked anyway. I’m like that in any situation where I’m more than ten feet off the ground. Ten feet I can handle. That’s it.
I closed the window and leaned on the sill a moment, resting my eyes. That’s when the machinery on the floor below started up. I opened my eyes and listened for a moment, then hobbled back to the elevators and rode down a floor. The noise was coming from the printing shop I’d seen listed on the lobby directory the day before. The door to the firm was held open by a wedge of wood, apparently in an attempt to get a little air going through the place. The name lettered on a pane of glass in the door was THE NEARLY FREE PRESS. I limped inside and looked around. A little counter ran partway across the front office. It was easy enough to step around and go back into a room with wooden flooring that supported a couple of old hand-fed platen presses and a more recent Heidelberg press from Germany that used a sucking vacuum arm to lift sheets of paper or other stock from a cradle on one side, position them on the printing block long enough for the type impression to be made by up-and-down-moving rollers, then deposit the finished piece of work in a cradle on the other side.
A friend I once knew up in the state of Washington had a print shop over on Vashon Island in Puget Sound with a couple of Heidelberg presses in it. You could go stunned-crazy watching a piece of machinery like that operate. I guess I grinned at it, because it was such a wobbly experience to encounter that sort of thing after the awful doings at the lake. And the grin was noticed by a fellow in his late thirties or so, lean and tanned with a Fu Manchu mustache on his lip and a rag tied around his sweating forehead. I hobbled to the edge of a workbench and leaned against it a minute, watching. The fellow tending the press pointed to a straight-backed chair over along a nearby wall. I limped over to it and sat. When the supply of paper in the delivery cradle was exhausted, he turned off the equipment and picked up an oil can to lubricate the press here and there.
“Knew a fellow who had a couple of those things in a little rural print shop a few miles from Seattle one time,” I told him.
“A couple of them?” he asked, not looking up. “What’d he use a couple of ’em for?”
“Had a direct mail business that sold return-address labels.”
He looked up at me then for a moment before he resumed his lube job.
“First he’d run through some colored stock that was scored to make a fold-over double postcard. One postcard made the pitch. If the customer went for it, he could tear off the other card with a postage-paid imprint on it and mail it back to the job shop. Then he had a linotype machine he used to set the names and addresses of these people who sent back the cards. Could get three or four columns of names on a regular eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of white stock gummed on the back side with the sort of stickum they have on the back of postage stamps. Can’t remember how many sheets he ran off, several hundred I guess, to an order. Then he’d cut the neatly stacked sheets of names in vertical columns and smear one side of the cut column of names with that red gum they use to hold together sheets of a tablet. After that was dried
he’d cut the columns into the little pads of individual return-address labels. Then he’d ship them out and wait for the dollar bills to roll in.”
“Did a good business?”
“Did a helluva business. Made a down payment on a house. Bought a new car and a Dodge pickup with a trailer hitch on the back. Bought a little runabout he could cruise around the sound with. Of course he worked awfully hard. Sundays too, lots of times.”
He laughed briefly and nodded his head. Then he put the oil can down and crossed to an old refrigerator on the opposite wall. “Like a beer?”
“Love one.”
He brought out a couple of sixteen-ounce cans of Old English Malt Liquor and crossed to hand me one. “What happened to your leg?”
“Got shot.”
He nodded. “Seems to me when I was a kid there were all kinds of outfits advertising return-address labels. Don’t see much of that these days.”
“That’s what occurred to me when I heard that old Heidelberg whooshing away.”
He went back to lean against another workbench. “What’s your friend doing now?”
“Oh, he’s got a little weekly shopping paper up there somewhere. Keep meaning to look him up when I’m in the area.”
“I just wondered if there might be a market for that return-address label sort of thing today.”
“Might be. In fact, I’d think there’d be a good chance of one. But a fellow should probably try to be pretty organized when he started up. Get as much of the market as he can before a couple dozen other printers jump into it.”
“Yeah.” He took a long tug of the beer. “I hear that direct mail stuff can be a little risky.”
I shrugged.
“You say it was a rural shop?”
“Yup. On an island out in Puget Sound. But he’d mail out cards to all over the West Coast.”
“I guess they have street directories where you could get the names and addresses to mail to.”
“That’s right.”
