The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “I’ve never had much of that,” Rachel complained.

  “Well, maybe you have but just haven’t come to recognize it for what it is yet. And when I’m working, I feel sometimes as if it’s just a very finely tuned extension of woman’s intuition at work. And it does seem to work. For the medical people. And for other people who run various sorts of business. And no, I don’t know any more about the corporate world or the stock market than I do about medicine. But when these people come to me with a problem, or a decision to make, I very often seem able to guide them in the right direction. Often enough so that these people feel I’m a worthwhile investment of their time and money.

  “But discretion,” she continued, looking up at me. “That is at the heart of things about these people.”

  “Okay, Maribeth. I’ll tell Mr. Welch you said no, and we’ll just take our chances with the rest of the news-gathering tribe.”

  At the end of the trail outside park headquarters a deputy at the doorway hailed Rachel. She excused herself and joined the deputy for a moment’s conversation. Partway through it the two of them turned to look down at Maribeth, Bobbie and myself. I didn’t like to see people do that. It usually meant trouble. And sure enough, when Rachel returned to drive us back over to our car in the other parking lot she had a sheepish expression on her face.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Somebody back at the office told Pershing about Maribeth. He’s anxious to meet her. He wants her over at the Hall of Justice in Santa Rosa.”

  “Who is Pershing?” Maribeth asked.

  “Somebody from Sacramento,” Rachel told her. “He’s sort of in charge of this investigation, as of this morning.”

  “Another policeman? Or sheriff’s person?”

  “Not exactly,” Rachel said, looking away.

  “He’s a politician out of the governor’s office,” I told her. “He hasn’t made himself too popular with Rachel here or the other people who’ve been doing the work. But they have to cooperate, or at least they have to appear to.”

  “Why do I have to talk to some stranger?” Maribeth asked Rachel. “I’ve told everything I know to Peter. And I trust he’s told it all to you people. I like you well enough, Rachel, but I just don’t want to have to talk to a lot of strangers about it.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Rachel with a shrug.

  “Does she have to, do you think?” I asked her. “Does she really have to?”

  Rachel made a little face and held her hands palms up. “I was told that when we were through here, I was to bring her in. Those were the words that were given me.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” said Bobbie.

  Maribeth had a pained look. “Peter?”

  “We’d better go see what the man wants. If we don’t it’ll only make things tougher for the people conducting the investigation.”

  Rachel cleared her throat. “I don’t know how much he’ll like the idea of having you with her, Bragg.”

  “Well it’s an idea he’ll have to get used to. Maribeth isn’t going in there on her own.”

  “Yea team,” Bobbie said quietly.

  Pershing had set himself up in an office across the big activities room from Sergeant Smith’s. He was a man of medium height and build who had a tendency to hunch his shoulders while talking across a desk. He had sandy hair combed straight back on his head and a whisper of a mustache.

  The deputy who had conducted us back there from the front counter poked her head into Pershing’s office and said something, then turned and gestured for Maribeth to enter. But I stepped ahead of her and went in first. Bobbie brought up the rear and Pershing popped to his feet.

  “Who are you people?” he demanded.

  “My name is Bragg. I’m a private investigator. This woman, Maribeth Robbins, is my client. The young woman is her niece, Bobbie.”

  “Well you and the niece clear out. It’s this woman I want to speak with.”

  “What about?”

  It took a few seconds for him to put his words together. “What about? I’m in charge of a multiple murder investigation. This woman, I understand, told us where to look to find the bodies. What in hell do you think I want to talk to her about? Now get out of here! You and the girl both.”

  “No way.”

  I’ll admit I have a streak of the theatrical in me. It’s something I had picked up covering the courts and attending press conferences and listening to police brass and lawyers and observing dozens of entertainers, politicians, bureaucrats and assorted puffballs during my newspaper career.

  So by now I had a way of moving and looking and talking when I chose to do so that could help put me in charge of a situation. This was one of those times. I moved a chair that was next to Pershing’s desk back away a comfortable distance and gestured for Maribeth to sit in it.

  “We’re sort of a team,” I told Pershing. “The three of us have been trying to get through this thing together since the beginning, almost.”

  I put a chair beside Maribeth for Bobbie to sit in, then dragged up a third to just in front of the desk and sat down in it, leaning forward.

  “I was the first person Mrs. Robbins got in touch with about all this. Acting in a responsible manner, I relayed the information she had been able to give me to Sergeant Smith. The sergeant was professional enough to not laugh me out of his office, but he asked if I could get a little more information about what everybody should be looking for. So I drove back down to the city to see Mrs. Robbins again, and she in turn endured a painful, solitary session of meditation trying to get a better sense of where these bodies might be buried. From what she told us after that, we ultimately were able to find them.”

  Pershing started to say something but I held up a hand that stopped him.

  “This has been a very trying experience for Mrs. Robbins. She wants to avoid publicity. She would prefer that nobody outside of Sergeant Smith and a couple of his detectives know anything about her role in all this. Part of my job is to try to make the ordeal less painful for her. She can’t give you any more information than she already has. She didn’t want to come here to see you. It was only in the spirit of cooperation with the sheriff’s office that she agreed to do it. So at this stage I don’t think it’s out of line for her niece and me to be with her while you say whatever it is you have to say.”

  Pershing thought about it briefly, staring at us over his steepled hands.

  “All right, Mr. Bragg. This is what I have to say. I have been given an enormous responsibility by the governor of this state to oversee the investigation of a heinous series of crimes. I am not a law enforcement officer, as such. I am more a technical administrator. The governor and I both have the utmost confidence in the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, but in this very special instance, the governor wanted somebody on the scene to make absolutely certain that nothing was overlooked that shouldn’t be overlooked.

  “And lo and behold,” he said softly, getting out of his chair and leaning forward. “Lo and behold. This morning, my first day on the job, I discovered there was something being overlooked. And that something was this woman sitting here in front of me who claims to be a psychic. Well, I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Bragg. It doesn’t wash with me. I don’t know if such a thing as a psychic even exists, and I don’t care. I happen to be one of the ones who feel they have no place in a criminal investigation. No psychics, no fortune tellers, no tarot cards or ESP or any of that. So I don’t see a psychic sitting here. I just see a woman who knew where a large number of murder victims were buried, and I want her to tell me how she knew it.”

  Maribeth’s head drooped.

  “Can you believe this shit?” Bobbie asked of nobody in particular.

  “Let’s back up a minute,” I suggested easily.

  “No, we’re not going to back up a minute, Mr. Bragg, and if you keep butting in where you aren’t wanted, I’ll begin proceedings to have your ticket pulled.”

  I laughe
d out loud. “There you’ve gone and done it, Pershing, put the fear of God in my heart. Maybe you’d better make the point you want to make, so we can get out of here.”

  Pershing just stared at me, then took a turn around the desk to regain his control before sitting down again. “Something you people had better understand. This could turn out to be the most serious thing any of you ever were involved in. This isn’t just a series of deliberate homicides any longer. This is a double-barreled death machine.”

  He waited until he was sure he had our attention. “That boy they dug up? Little Donald McGuire?”

  I nodded. “The fireman’s son.”

  “That’s right, the fireman’s son. And the fireman’s wife’s son. Well it seems that sometime in the middle of last night the fireman’s wife went out into a closed garage and started their car engine and sat in that car until she was found dead this morning by her husband. A note she left said she couldn’t endure what happened to Donald. Her precise words. Couldn’t endure.”

  He got up from behind the desk again and turned to stare at a blank wall. “That’s why I might seem a little angry and crude with you people. That’s why the governor wanted me on the scene to make sure there were no slip-ups. And that,” he said, turning back to us, “is why I want Mrs. Robbins to tell me how she knew where to find the bodies.”

  “Mrs. Robbins didn’t know where to find the bodies.”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Robbins just gave us the best description she could provide of what the surrounding territory might look like. Sergeant Smith wanted her to take part in an aerial search but she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

  “So I volunteered to go in her place, with the information she provided me, but I wasn’t the one who found the bodies, either. A pilot friend of mine finally put together what Mrs. Robbins had told us, and thought to look in the general area of Jack London State Park. But Jack London State Park is sprawled out across eight hundred acres. So you couldn’t even say it was my pilot friend who found the bodies.

  “The person who spotted the exact site, or one of them, was another friend of the pilot who was along for the ride. His name is Harvey Draper. He’s a forensic anthropologist and a deputy coroner from San Francisco. He’s done a lot of this sort of work. He’s in charge of the body recovery operation going on over at the park right now. From up in the plane he spotted a likely place to look for them. Because of the contour of the land there, he said later that it would have been extremely unlikely a person at ground level could have recognized the site for what it was. Anyway, Harvey is the one who found your bodies.”

  Pershing gaped. Apparently nobody had gotten around yet to telling him about Harvey. He crossed the office and pulled open the door. “Wait here,” he told us.

  I got up and crossed to the open door. Pershing was headed for Smith’s office. I turned back in time to see Maribeth’s crouched figure begin to tremble. Her face was buried in her hands and she was crying.

  “This is barbaric,” Bobbie said. She was standing beside Maribeth. “Can’t we get out of here?”

  “I’d say it’s about time,” I agreed.

  Maribeth was getting to her feet when Rachel Goodwin came to the doorway. “I’m taking Maribeth back home,” I told her. “She’s ready to come apart.”

  Rachel nodded. “Okay, but you’ve got a bunch of newspeople waiting out front for you.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Somebody called them. Apparently somebody told them Maribeth was being brought in for questioning by Pershing. Maybe he called them himself.”

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  “Sure. I’ll show the women. Why don’t you go into Smitty’s office and tell Pershing you’re leaving. What was it like in there?”

  “Pretty bad. He’s blowing a lot of smoke.”

  “Tell me about it.” She took Maribeth’s arm and led her and Bobbie to the back exit. I waited a few moments then crossed to Smith’s office. There was a sound of angry voices from in there. They stopped when I entered. Smith and Pershing were the only two in the office.

  “My client’s about an inch away from having a nervous breakdown. I’m getting her out of here. Does anybody know who summoned the newspeople out front?”

  Smith looked at me with a puzzled frown.

  “I’m holding a photo opportunity for them in a few minutes,” Pershing said.

  The sergeant was jiggling a pencil in his hand. Right then he threw it down on his desk so hard that it bounced across the room. He stalked past Pershing and me and went out of the office without another word. I turned and headed for the back door and parking lot.

  TWELVE

  I dropped off Bobbie and Maribeth in front of their apartment building. During the drive back from Sonoma County Maribeth had made a game effort to control her emotions, but she rambled on some about her field of endeavor.

  She said that if her extraordinary gift was going to lead her down these dark streets, the discovery of dead bodies and the resulting suicide of a young mother, she would rather toss it all up and get out of the business. She talked about canceling her schedule for the next week or so and maybe taking a trip somewhere to think about things. One thing she would have to determine, she said, more to herself than to us, was whether extrasensory perception was something one could just cast aside, like a coat that doesn’t fit any longer. Or was it something a person had to carry to the grave with them?

  Bobbie was sitting in back. She and I had exchanged more than one uneasy glance in the rearview mirror during all this.

  I drove on downtown, parked and walked up to the office. It was after seven o’clock and getting dark out. I let myself into the main reception area and relocked the door behind me.

  I didn’t bother turning on lights. I’d been coming into that office enough years now so the street light through the windows behind Sharon Rapler’s desk was more than enough to let me find my way. Sloe and Morrisey’s suite was to the right of the reception area. Their door opened into a comfortable conference room, all padded leather and law books and humidors. They each had a private office beyond, and past them was a doorway leading to adjoining offices which now housed the associate attorneys allied with the firm and other secretaries and clerks I’d never even met. My office was to the left of the reception area. I flipped on a desk lamp, hung my jacket, stared out the window for a minute at lights across the way then dropped into the chair behind the desk and tried to take stock of things. It was no easy task.

  I think of myself as having an adequate sort of brain. If I had a little edge I put it down to the way I had learned through trying times to view the people and things around me. And I had, over the years, developed a practice of taking problems and situations apart in my mind and putting them down on paper and working them around until something began to make sense in all of it.

  If after all that I still couldn’t make sense of it, I would fall back on the last line of a poem written by a fellow I knew named Bob Peterson, who used to hang out around Sausalito. The poem was a birthday tribute to a woman Peterson admired. In it he describes her nature as being similar to that of some rather famous persons who were of the same sign of the Zodiac. Then he compares those natures to Peterson’s own and some noted people of that sign. The piece ends on a promise of more, when Peterson declares in his last line that he was “going downtown for more information.”

  And that generally is what in the end I would do if things in my world didn’t fit together. I would get on the phone or go out on the street and dig up things that I could add to what I already knew until it began to take a recognizable shape. All pretty basic, really.

  But this thing with Maribeth and the bodies was turned upside down. It was the way Sergeant Barry Smith had described the problem with serial murders. You’re overwhelmed with information and there’s no way to shut it off to give yourself a chance to pick through it for the important stuff.

  I had a client who
was a psychic. That in itself could throw you off your stride some. I had met her by helping to keep her from taking her own life a dozen years earlier. Now she was responsible for the unearthing of the victims of a multiple slayer.

  I knew a lawyer’s mind would tell me that my job didn’t have anything to do with those deaths. My job was to protect my client from some unknown threat. But the act of unearthing victims of the killer now had led to the suicide of another innocent party, and that, combined with the insensitivity of a man from the governor’s office, was putting my client into a state where I had to be wary that the unknown threat might be my own client’s suicide.

  I could imagine Maribeth experiencing guilt for the suicide of the slain Donald McGuire’s mother. Maribeth might feel it would have been better for the boy’s mother to think only that her child was missing. Better not to have had his body found and learn he had been slain. But because of Maribeth, they had found the boy’s body, and many others.

  But then I couldn’t be sure of that dark area my mind was leading me into. I doubted that even a psychiatrist could follow such a track through somebody else’s mind, let alone somebody who seemed to have the unusual mental process that Maribeth did. What I wanted was some meat and potatoes detective work: documents to find; clues to discover. Something other than trying to follow the shadows that hovered in another person’s mind.

  I leaned back and made a face at myself. I had come full circle. I had put myself back into the pickle Sergeant Smith faced. Where do you start? Where do you turn? What do you look for?

  I wondered what Allison France was doing up in Barracks Cove.

  I was up and putting on my jacket when the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver. “Bragg.”

  “Mr. Bragg, you don’t know me,” a man’s voice said, “but I think I might have some information you’ll find interesting. In fact, if you have a tape recorder by the phone you might like to plug it in.”