The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “I didn’t meet too many like her. And I never met even one like you. Took being a detective to get me up to Barracks Cove and meet a snazzy dame like yourself.”

  I got her. She couldn’t think of anything to say and just sighed a little raggedly. We’d taken the outdoor escalator back down to ground level of the plaza and were looking in shop windows here and there when I saw a newspaper rack with that morning’s Monterey Herald. I froze. Allison turned to stare at me.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s her,” I said, staring at the front page of the Herald. “The girl I met last night.”

  It was a picture of Jo Sommers, eyes downcast, being led somewhere by an official-looking gent in civvies. The headline over the photo, and the caption beneath, told me that Jo’s husband, the psychiatrist, had been murdered, and Jo was being held as chief suspect.

  THREE

  The sheriff’s office wasn’t telling the press a great deal about what was supposed to have gone on at the Sommers home the night before. The cause of death was tentatively listed as suffocation, but the suffocating instrument wasn’t identified. The person who called for help was the victim’s wife, Jo. And the rest of it was pretty thin gruel, which wasn’t surprising, considering the state that relations between the press and the government seemed to be reaching. Not that cops and sheriff’s deputies in Monterey County were any worse than those in other places. It was a natural outgrowth of the stance being taken in the nation’s capital, about what is proper for the citizenry to be let in on. And this was the nub of it, so far as people in the news-gathering business were concerned. They were, after all, representing the public. When something of interest occurs, it is the business of the ladies and gentlemen with notepads and Nikons and those with minicams and microphones, to go to the scene of the event and ask questions as representatives of the public. You and I, sitting in our living rooms, hear tell of an event, and there are quite normal questions which pop to mind. How could that have happened? Who did what? Why were those people there? Who was in charge? Or even more intriguing, who was the person who made that decision, and upon what set of logic or ethics did he or she make it?

  And that is what recent administrations in Washington wanted ever more increasingly these days to not disclose. And that official stance had been around long enough now to permeate every level of government. What it came down to was a bottom-line stance that it no longer is the people’s right to know what is going on. Which, of course, is quite a ways removed from what they teach you in journalism school.

  The story in the Monterey Herald did go on to say that Dr. Haywood Sommers was a nationally recognized psychiatrist who had specialized in military psychoses. Until right then I hadn’t realized that there was such a specialization. But on second thought, it must have been a whale of a field. No wonder the Sommerses could afford to live in Carmel Highlands. I offered the paper to Allison, so she could read about the death of the late Dr. Sommers, if she liked.

  “No thanks. Not my line of work.”

  “Not mine, either. Not this weekend anyhow.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” she told me.

  In the past, we’d had a few other holidays and weekends that we’d planned to spend together abruptly interrupted by my work. More than a few. But then, that was the nature of the work. Trouble doesn’t pick a convenient time to fall on somebody. So the somebody with the trouble doesn’t always wait until a convenient time to come and offer to pay me for my time and services.

  “It’s probably just a mistake anyhow,” I told her, sailing the Monterey Herald into a litter can.

  “Probably,” said Allison, putting her arm through mine and leading me on to the next shop window.

  We looked into a lot of windows after that and even left the streets to go into the shops themselves from time to time. Allison remarked that the town was like one big toy department for adults. They sold shoes and clothing, kitchenware and wine, paintings and photos, leather goods and brass and several thousand other things, including items to slake a person’s hunger and thirst.

  Of course, after reading the newspaper story, my mind wasn’t that much into the shops of Carmel. It more or less stayed on Jo Sommers and whether or not I thought she was capable of killing somebody. But that’s not quite accurate, either. I’m one of those people who believe that anybody, under certain circumstances, can be brought to take another human’s life, if only to save their own neck or the life of another. But what I wondered about Jo was whether she was capable of killing somebody under other than these most extreme circumstances. The newspaper story hadn’t said anything about the death occurring in the middle of a heated battle between Jo and the doctor. And it didn’t say anything about anybody else being around in whose defense Jo might have battled to the death.

  What I finally decided, drifting from shop to shop, ever more distracted, was that Jo was a dangerous woman, but not killing-dangerous. She could bewitch you in a number of ways, and she probably could screw up your life to the point where a man might be brought to consider suicide, but Jo wouldn’t be caught doing the dirty act herself. If anything, I think she was a little afraid of violence. Still, as those things sometimes go, she also was a little bit fascinated by it. I think that is why she went with Jimmy John all those years ago. Jimmy John was quick with his fists, as we used to say when I was growing up in Seattle. And I recalled a time at the No Name bar in Sausalito, when I worked there. It was one of those rare occasions when Jo and Jimmy John came in during the evening, and that particular night another rare event, for the No Name, occurred. Two men near the front of the house started a slugfest. Another bartender and I went over the top of the bar and wrestled the combatants outside while Patty the cocktail waitress held open the front door. When the other bartender and I turned to go back inside, one of the fighters stepped away from his opponent and took a swing at me. I leveled him there on the sidewalk. Jo Sommers, just inside the front door, had seen it. If ever a woman had flashing eyes, that’s what hers were when I went back inside the bar. And it was from that time on that we used to flirt softly whenever Jimmy John went to the men’s room.

  Allison and I drove back out to the county fairgrounds early in the afternoon and walked up the long, grassy promenade toward the Hunt Club building and main arena. Mark Naftalin and the Robert Cray Band and some other people were performing at the afternoon concert. I am not all that great a fan of bluegrass and country music, but Allison is. And there always was the added attraction of fan madness, mostly female fan madness, during the Saturday and Sunday afternoon concerts. Various young women become so transported by the music booming through the banks of loudspeakers on either side of the stage that they get out of their seats and boogie in the aisles. They sometimes are an erotic and far more entertaining show than the fellows up there on the stage plucking and tooting for pay.

  But as we passed the stalls of pottery and posters and jewelry and clothing, on our way to the arena entrance, my mind still was on Jo Sommers, who probably wouldn’t boogie in the aisles but could be pretty erotic in her own fashion and was said by Monterey County authorities to have maybe murdered her psychiatrist husband. We were just outside the arena turnstiles when Allison stopped, swung around to face me and looped her long, tanned arms around my neck.

  “Okay, Bragg, go see her.”

  “What?”

  She gave me a look that told me I was underestimating her intelligence again. That is something I’ve never done with her, though. In fact, while I might know a thing or two she doesn’t, when it comes to sheer smarts, I think she has it all over me.

  “Ever since you read the story about your girlfriend, it’s like I’ve been walking around with a gent who has his mind on last year’s regrets.”

  “She was never my girlfriend.”

  “Okay, she was never your girlfriend. But go see her. And give her a message from me.”

  “What message?”

  “Tell her I wanted you to go hear her st
ory, but that you’re not to do anything about it until after this weekend. During the jazz festival, you’re mine. That’s the agreement we made, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So go see her. But leave me your pass to the Hunt Club.”

  “What do you want that for? The place is the sort of dive where musicians and press people are apt to put the hit on you.”

  She gave me a little-girl smile I’d never seen before. I gave her a kiss and the pass to the Hunt Club and headed back for the exit gate.

  The Monterey County jail is about fifteen miles east of the fairgrounds, in Salinas, on Natividad Road. When the matron brought Jo into the interview room, she was wearing a blue jumpsuit—the jailhouse togs all the women prisoners wore that year. Jo gave me a tiny smile and sat across the table from me with a package of Newport menthol cigarettes and a book of matches in her hand. She took out a cigarette. I reached across the table and took the book of matches from her and lit her cigarette. She blew out a wisp of smoke with a little nod of thanks and leaned back in her chair to study me. She hadn’t had a lot of sleep and she looked a little depressed, but she still was in good control of herself. She didn’t have the god-awful desperate look that many did the first time they were put behind steel bars.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked.

  “I’m here under orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Lady Allison. She noticed I became a little preoccupied after I read about your arrest.”

  Jo’s right foot was arched on its toes, and she swung her knee back and forth, as if there was gritty tension built up in her. She was a woman, I decided, who would exude great sensuality even when sitting in a gas chamber.

  “Why should you become preoccupied after reading about my arrest?”

  I took a deeper than normal breath and let it out and stared at her a moment. “They aren’t going to give us enough time together so we can flirt back and forth the way we used to up at the No Name when your fellow went to the can.”

  “Is that what we did back then?” She shook her head, regretting it as soon as she’d said it. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s beginning to get to me, being in here. I’m glad you came. I can use all the help I can get. Thank your lady for me.”

  “I will. But she wanted me to give you a message, which basically is that I’m to listen to your story, but not to do anything about it until after the jazz festival. I’ve disappointed her a lot in the past. I really can’t do that again, this time.”

  “That’s plenty fair enough. Thank her again.”

  “Monday, I’ll start doing whatever I can to help you.”

  “I’d like that. Are you good at what you do?”

  I hesitated a moment. “There are a lot of people I’ve worked for in recent years who would tell you I am. But I’m not infallible. I can be duped, and I can be dropped by a bullet, the same as any other man.”

  “You’ve been shot at?”

  “More times than I like to think about. And I’ve got the scars to prove not everybody who shot at me missed.”

  “You’ll have to let me see them sometime,” she said with another little smile.

  “Forget you’re the vamp of Northern California and tell me what happened.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes. Did you kill him?”

  “God, no. I’m not tough enough for that. My body is very good for some things, but not that. And my mind isn’t tough like that, either. I rather think the closest I could come to being involved in death would have been back in old Roman times, if I were one of the pampered women in Caesar’s box at the Colosseum, looking on at a victorious gladiator standing over another, sword poised, eyes searching out the royal box to see if the vanquished should live or die. I think I could quite easily signal thumbs-down, just for the excitement of watching a life taken.”

  I stared at her a moment. For the first time since I’d met her, the attraction I felt for her cooled off some.

  “When did you get home?”

  “Not too long after I saw you. Around eleven, I think. I was going to go back into the concert again, but I felt tired all of a sudden. I think seeing you took a lot of energy out of me. I have no idea why. It isn’t as if we had experienced any consuming affair in the past. The possibility of it in the future, perhaps.”

  She shook her head and took a draw on the cigarette, then plucked a tobacco shred from her lip. “No matter. I just decided to say good night to Nikki and head back home. The lights were on when I got there. I heard the television in Woody’s study. Everything seemed normal, but he didn’t reply when I called out to him.”

  “Woody being your husband?”

  “That’s right. Haywood, actually. But I and a few privileged friends were allowed to call him Woody.”

  “What did you do when he didn’t answer?”

  “I went into the study. He was in his easy chair in front of the TV set. His head was on his chest, as if he’d fallen asleep. There was nearly a full drink of Scotch on the stand beside him. He’s done that before, fallen asleep during a late show. I would rouse him and we would go into our beds.”

  “You slept separately?”

  “Separate bedrooms, even. Why are you interested in that?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know why I had asked it.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “this time when I tried to rouse him he tumbled out of the chair onto the floor.”

  A little tremor fluttered her shoulders. “I was quite frightened at that. I had no idea what might be the matter. I knelt on the carpet and rolled him onto his back and tried again to wake him. When that failed I called an ambulance.” She put out her cigarette and stared at the tabletop in front of her.

  “What did you do while waiting for the ambulance?”

  “I tried to make him comfortable.” She looked up at me with a stark expression. “I didn’t know he was dead. I thought people—when they were dead, I thought their bodies turned cold. His wasn’t. He felt normal. I propped a pillow beneath his head. He was wearing a sweater over his shirt and tie. I loosened the tie and opened a button or two on the shirt so he might breathe easier.”

  She squeezed shut her eyes and dropped her head briefly. “I was doing this to a dead man,” she said softly. “But I didn’t know.”

  She shook her head and got another Newport out of the wrinkled pack. I reached for the matches, but she motioned my hand away and lit it herself.

  “I was still fussing over him when the ambulance arrived, and a few minutes after that a deputy sheriff showed up. The ambulance people must have notified the sheriff’s office something was wrong out at our place. It must have been a slow night; an officer responded.”

  She took a long draw on the cigarette and leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. “Things went very badly after that. The ambulance attendants made a cursory examination of Woody. They wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with him. They spoke quietly to each other a moment, then one of them said something to the deputy, and he in turn asked me to wait in an adjoining room. I was angry, because they wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with Woody. But the officer was quite firm with me. I could sense a certain hostility.” She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I went out to the kitchen and fixed myself a good stiff drink. That’s what made the rest worse, I suppose. Some other men arrived soon after. They began doing the things I’ve read about them doing when there’s been a death. Photos. Measuring things. I suddenly realized that my husband must have been dead. I went a little crazy then. I began screaming at them. Ordered them out of my house. I tried to get to Woody. I wanted to hold him. I thought it might help somehow. But they wouldn’t let me near him. They finally put handcuffs on me, not very gently, either. I was mad. I was mad at all the strangers in my home, and I was mad at Woody for—for being dead like that. Two of them, detectives, I suppose, tried to talk to me. I wasn’t a very cooperative witness. I was starting to go to pieces.”

  She gro
und out the cigarette and shook her head. She seemed near tears. “I cursed them. Soundly. My entire world was falling to pieces around me. I kicked out at them. I screamed. It wasn’t really them I was mad at any longer. It was just the things that had happened. I still didn’t understand it all. I didn’t understand what the deputies were there for in the first place, if Woody had had a heart attack or a stroke or whatever. But I was fighting back the only way I knew how. And that didn’t help matters at all, of course. And by the time it was all over with, they brought me here.”

  “What was supposed to have happened to your husband?”

  “They say somebody—me—smothered him, with the pillow I’d placed beneath his head. They found nasal hairs on it. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “Who told you this?”

  “One of the detectives. The one who read me my so-called rights, then tried to get me to confess to killing my husband.” She leaned forward, her hand on the table balled into a fist.

  “Well, let me tell you. It is a very routine and dull thing on a television show or in a movie when the police read a suspect his rights. But last night, I listened. When they read that statement to me off a little card, I listened like I’ve never listened in my life. And I didn’t tell them anything. And I told them I wouldn’t be telling them anything until my lawyer was sitting at my side.”

  “Good for you.”

  She nodded and leaned back in her chair. And then she began to cry. She was quiet at first. A little shudder went through the upper part of her body, and then a small animal sound leaped out of her throat. She leaned forward until her head was on the table, while a long keening noise came from her and one of her hands beat softly on the tabletop.

  It was a couple of minutes before it passed. I handed a fresh handkerchief to her. She composed herself, finally, and lit another cigarette.

  “You must have loved him more than you’ve let on.”