The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “They were fond of each other,” I repeated.

  “Yes, and…Oh, I don’t know, sometimes I had the feeling they were talking about things they didn’t want me to know about.”

  She was winging it, I felt, but she was beginning to warm up to it pretty well.

  “I mean, Nikki would come visit sometimes, you know, and I’d be doing things around the house. She could come in here to chat with Woody, and sometimes their voices would drop, and I’d know they were talking about something they didn’t want me to overhear. It didn’t bother me, really. They were like a couple of kids together.”

  “Were there phone calls between them?”

  “Of course. Nikki would call, and if I answered we’d talk for a few moments, then sometimes she’d ask to speak with my husband. And, of course, there’s a phone over on the desk. Woody could have called her at any time. We tried to respect the privacy of each other’s phone conversations.”

  I grunted. “Allison and I were at a party Saturday evening. We met a personable young fellow working as a bartender there, who also works at a bar called the Duck’s Quack in town. Allison and I went by there the next evening and saw him in conversation with Nikki. Alex something his name was.”

  Her face brightened. “Oh, of course. Alex Kilduff. He’s a very popular young man. That’s why he’s asked to work so many private parties. Everybody seems to know him.”

  “Did he and Nikki go together?”

  “I don’t know. They might have, at least some of the time. Nikki mentions him—used to mention him—in conversation from time to time. But I doubt if there was any steadfast relationship between them. Alex goes with a lot of women. How is Allison, by the way. Is she still here?”

  “Yeah, she plans to stick around for a few more days. She’s fine. Probably would have sent her regards if she’d known I’d be by to see you.”

  “Oh. Well, you must be sure to say hello to her for me. But Peter…I mean, it’s terrible, what happened to Nikki, but why are you asking so many questions about her? Aren’t you trying to find my husband’s killer?”

  Her concentration was beginning to zig and zag. “Yes, I am. But if your husband and Nikki had some sort of relationship and both of them are killed within a matter of days, I’d be foolish to ignore the possibility that their deaths are related somehow.” I had another sip of the drink. “When I came here the other day to feed the cat, the sheriff’s investigator told me something about a tape recorder that was on your husband’s desk.”

  She sat up a little straighter. “We have two recorders. A desk model Woody used in his practice, and a little portable.”

  “Could I use one of them? I have a couple of tapes I’d like to listen to.”

  “All right. Which of them would you like?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She got up and walked over to the desk in the far corner. She brought a small tape recorder over to me but didn’t go back to her chair immediately.

  “Peter, did the sheriff’s people tell you about a tape they found on this, after my husband’s murder?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  She returned to her chair and reached for the gin and tonic, giving me a little smile. “It wasn’t as serious as they tried to make out,” she told me. “With Woody, it was like some sort of game. He’d hide the recorder somewhere and turn it on, then get me in here and goad me into an argument. He would play it back for me sometime later. Sometimes during an intimate moment. He thought it was great fun, and I got used to it after a while. In fact, I got so I rather liked it. It gave me an excuse to go out and find a younger man to flirt with. That particular night, on Friday, I found you, at the jazz festival. But the sheriff’s people couldn’t understand that.”

  “I suppose they couldn’t. They told me your husband threatened to toss you out.”

  “He did that, but he never meant it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was a man by now somewhat in decline compared to what he was when we met and married. He knew full well he’d never find a woman as young as I am again, who would put up with living with him. As young as I am, and, I might as well add, as artful about some things as I am.”

  “You maintained a decent physical relationship to the end, then?”

  “Decent is putting it mildly. He was a vigorous man, to the end, as you say. And he used to call me the best fuck in the continental United States.” She had another sip of the drink. “I took that as quite a compliment. He traveled extensively, you know.” She was staring at me with a blank face.

  I cleared my throat, then took out one of the tapes Nikki Scarborough had left for me at the Fernwood cafe and put it into the recorder. I hit the Play button.

  From the recorder came the sound of a man harrumphing a couple of times, then saying, “One, two, three, four, here we go…”

  Jo bolted out of her chair, nearly dropping her drink again. She had a stricken look on her face. I hit the Stop button.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s Woody’s voice. It’s the little prologue he went through, whenever taping a patient. Where did you get it?”

  “I’ll come to that. Did your husband tape all the sessions he had with his patients?”

  “Most of them. Unless the patient was adamantly opposed. At those times he took thorough notes and would transcribe those to tape as soon as the session ended and the patient had left. Where did you get it, Peter?”

  “Nikki left this and another tape for me at the cafe we were supposed to meet at in Big Sur. Did your husband keep all the tapes from his days of practice?”

  “Yes. Most of them are in a storage loft in the garage. Where would Nikki have gotten her hands on it?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you. Let’s hear what’s on it, before the sheriff’s people come by.”

  “Sheriff’s people? Coming here again?”

  “Somebody’s bound to eventually, to ask you about Nikki. I had to tell them the two of you knew each other.”

  “Why did you have to tell them that?”

  “Jo, when you’re the person who finds a body and reports it to the cops, you have to tell them pretty much everything you know about it, if you don’t want to take that solemn ride into the lockup. Now pipe down a minute, I want to hear this.”

  I started the recorder again. Jo got up and went across to the bar to fix herself another drink. The gin didn’t seem to be having much effect on her. The doctor’s voice continued:

  “August 1977. La Jolla, California. We are exploring the dilemma that presented itself during the closing days of the American presence in Vietnam. You were at the loading bay of the cargo plane at Da Nang airport. The woman and your child were in the mob of people being held back at the perimeter of the loading area. Your aircraft is at, or near, capacity. You can hear the rumble of distant shellfire. Enemy troops are advancing, friendly troops are retreating.

  “Now, we are going to force ourselves to analyze each of these conditions in turn. You at the plane. The woman and child in the throng. The approaching fighting. We are going to explore what options were realistically open to you, and rate each of these options as to their probability, or capability, of success…”

  I didn’t know where he was going with this, but the doctor seemed to know his business. At least it made sense to me to separate out different elements of an awful experience.

  I flipped the recorder switch to Fast Forward. When I put it back on listening speed, the doctor and his patient, a man with a low-pitched, agitated voice, were discussing the man’s relationship with the woman. I didn’t know the patient, but I didn’t feel as if I had the right to listen in on any more of his woes. I flipped the cassette to play the other side.

  “Did the doctor see his patients for hour-long sessions?”

  “Not quite. He told me once he tried to hold them to fifty minutes. Then, after the patient left, he would voice his evaluation of the session, and what direction he might go d
uring the next visit by the same patient.”

  I ran the recorder on fast-forward again to near the end of the tape. “Did he discuss his work with you much?”

  “No, not much. Just in the way other men might come home and tell their wives about a funny thing that happened at the office that day.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was making a little joke or what. Her nose was back into her gin and tonic.

  Toward the end of the tape I put it on play again. The patient had evidently left, and Sommers was recording his evaluation of the session. During the time I listened, he used a lot of jargon I didn’t understand, then mentioned the patient’s name a couple of times. A chap named Bergman.

  I changed tapes to listen to the second one Nikki had left for me. I ran it fast forward, then stopped it randomly somewhere near the middle of the first side. The man speaking was another patient. He had a flat, almost artificial-sounding voice. He was talking about an ambulance ride he’d had somewhere.

  “It occurred to me at the time how fitting it was that I should be leaving the field in an ambulance, for a very great part of me felt as if it had died. At least…At least I knew I had left my soul back there…”

  I stopped the tape and put the recorder on fast-forward. I wondered how a man could spend a professional lifetime dealing with this sort of thing. I flipped the tape to play the other side. Jo was back over at the bar, pouring more mirth into her glass. Maybe she got it from her late husband. I think with the stories he’d had to listen to and deal with for a lifetime, it wouldn’t be unusual if the man had stayed drunk for the duration of his retirement.

  When I put the recorder on play once again the doctor was giving his sum-up. And when he mentioned the patient’s name I sat up straight. It was Wakefield, and I thought of the brightly lighted home on the hill overlooking the Carmel Valley, and the host of the Saturday night party, a man in the uniform of an army major general.

  TEN

  Gus Wakefield had a smile in his voice when I first phoned, but that changed soon after I explained that Mrs. Sommers had hired me to find her husband’s killer and added that I’d come upon something that indicated he might be of assistance. I told him I’d like to drive out to see him.

  “If it’s a minor point, maybe we could clear it up on the telephone,” he suggested.

  “I would say, sir, it’s more in the realm of a major point, which combined with something you told me the other evening makes me think we really should sit down together and talk things over.”

  He took his time about it but seemed to come to the conclusion it wouldn’t accomplish much trying to stall me. I guess if you’ve made major general, you’re capable of making the nasty decisions and acting on them.

  “All right. Why don’t you come now? I can see you before dinner.”

  The shadows were lengthening in the Valley when I got to the road that meandered up the hillside toward the Wakefield home.

  The general answered the door himself with a brusque greeting and led me through the large room where the party had been held over the weekend. The rugs and furniture were back in place, turning it into just another mammoth living room with a spectacular view.

  Beyond the living room was a hallway with a bathroom off one side and a small study off the other. The study had a desk, a couple of chairs, photos and memorabilia on the walls and the view of the Valley. Wakefield, wearing gray slacks, a white sports shirt and an argyle-patterned, gray-and-blue pullover sweater, gestured toward one of the chairs and settled into the swivel chair at the desk.

  “I’m not going to go through the civility of offering you a drink, Mr. Bragg. If we’re going to talk about murder, I’d rather have all my senses about me.”

  We weren’t on a first-name basis any longer.

  “No offense, Mr. Wakefield, I feel the same way. Or would you prefer to be called general?”

  “Under the circumstances, just Wakefield should be adequate. Please get to the point.”

  “All right. This afternoon I came into possession of a pair of audiotape cassettes. Just before phoning you, I played portions of them. They apparently were tapes that had been recorded by Dr. Sommers when he was in practice. They were of sessions with his patients, followed by summations of those sessions by the doctor after the patient had left. I didn’t feel right about listening in on them. He was speaking to troubled men. But I felt I needed to get some idea of what these tapes were about, because of the unusual circumstances under which they came into my possession. The first tape didn’t mean much to me. But during the summary of the second one, Dr. Sommers mentioned your name. And the brief portion of the conversation between Dr. Sommers and the patient mentioned an ambulance ride.”

  Wakefield got up out of his chair and went to stare out the windows, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. I didn’t know if it was pay dirt, but I’d hit something.

  “Then I recalled at the party the other evening, sir, you said something about—how Dr. Sommers could have caused a lot of mischief in this community, if he were of a mind to. How he could trigger intolerable memories in some of his former patients. Some of whom might even live in the Monterey area. Were you one of his patients, sir?”

  He continued standing with his back to me for several moments more, then turned and dropped back into the chair. He looked like a different man—depleted and chalky-faced. When he raised his eyes, there was appeal in them.

  “I appreciate that you have a job to do, Mr. Bragg. I, on the other hand, have no further job to do. I’m supposed to be relaxing and enjoying the sunset years, after a career of service to my country. I don’t much like the idea that somebody else’s job must now intrude in my own life.”

  We just stared at each other. There was nothing I could say, really. I didn’t blame him for the way he felt. He turned, finally, and pressed a key on an internal communications unit I hadn’t noticed in a bookcase alongside the desk. A woman’s voice answered. I recognized it as his wife’s.

  “Dear, something important has come up. I might have to beg off dinner for a bit.”

  Their conversation was muted and brief. He switched off the device and turned back to me. “Mr. Bragg, what I have to tell you, I haven’t told to another person living in this area. I would prefer to have it remain that way, so far as it is within your discretion.”

  “You have my word, sir.”

  “Good. Then to answer your question, no, I was not a patient of Woody Sommers. But my brother Hadley was. In fact, I’m the one who arranged for Woody to try helping my brother. Dr. Sommers and I had met some while before, when we were both serving at the Pentagon. I am only going to give you the essential details of this, Mr. Bragg. And then, in turn, I would like to know how you came into possession of that recording.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “My younger brother was a fresh second lieutenant with a rifle company in Korea. His group was on the line for sixteen days solid, battling over one of those interminable hills in that godforsaken country. It was the first combat for Hadley and most of the other men. Green outfits weren’t ordinarily thrown into that sort of situation, but our troops were being rather chewed up right then. They were there out of necessity.”

  He closed his eyes for the time it took him to take a deep breath and let it back out. “Hadley cracked. Under fire. Pure and simple. He just left the position and walked away. When he got to an area in back of the fighting, he went up to an aid station and commandeered a vehicle at gunpoint. That was the ambulance mentioned on that tape. He had himself driven to a regimental command post and reported to a senior officer. He told the people there he’d deserted his position and that he wasn’t going back there, no matter the cost. He was shipped home under guard and held at a disciplinary barracks at Fort Lewis, Washington, pending court-martial. When I learned of it, I managed for Woody Sommers to fly out to see him. I’m not quite sure what I hoped for. Something that might put my brother’s heart back together, maybe. Something that might assist his
defense. Something that might explain what had happened to him. I didn’t know then and I don’t know to this day. It hardly mattered. He might well have been shot before a firing squad for what he did.

  “Woody had three sessions with Hadley, over a five-day period. On the night following the third session, my brother hanged himself from a water pipe traversing the barracks ceiling.”

  He looked at me coldly but in full control of himself. Maybe he didn’t talk about it to anybody, but he’d grown to live with it long ago.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  He just grunted. “Where did you get the recording?”

  “It, along with another, was left for me at a small restaurant down in Big Sur, by a woman potter named Nikki Scarborough. Do you know her by any chance?”

  “No, the name means nothing to me.”

  “I met her a few days ago through a mutual friend. She learned what sort of work I do, and this morning we talked on the telephone. She wanted to see me about some sort of trouble she said she was in. We agreed to meet at the restaurant, but she left there just before I arrived. But she had left the tapes behind for me.”

  “I would like to speak to this woman.”

  “Yes, well, she’s dead, Mr. Wakefield. I got directions to where she lived and drove on out there. Somebody had shot her just a short time before I arrived.”

  Gus Wakefield sat back in his chair, his face rigid.

  “I phoned the sheriff’s office and went over things with the investigators, but I didn’t tell them about the tapes, and I don’t intend to, unless it turns out that’s the only way to find whoever killed the young woman. The sheriff probably could have my license lifted if he learned I had the tapes and didn’t tell his men about them, but I think you’re a man of honor and that you’d just as soon have them kept out of circulation yourself. And I guess the reason I’m telling you all this is with the hope that now you’ll tell me anything else you might know about what’s been going on around here.”