The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “Not a whole lot. But what she did say is what made me ask you about the Berkeley girl’s boyfriends. Has it occurred to you that a number of the victims appear to have been sexually very active?”

  “I’ve thought about that some, but it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. What are you thinking, some religious nut out there?”

  “I’m not thinking anything just yet. I’m just remarking on an attribute common to more of these people than you would expect, on average.”

  “Maybe there’s just more of it going around these days. The ‘What, me worry?’ syndrome despite all. What did the Ellis woman have to say about Nancy Dobbs?”

  I briefly described Karen’s take on Nancy Dobbs, including her habit of cruising around topless and how that could have been what she was doing when she met whoever put her in the grave.

  “But that could, as I say, be all pure poppycock from the sweet lips of Karen Ellis. How were these last four people killed, by the way?”

  “All four were shot once in the head. A slug was recovered from one of the brain cavities. Probably a twenty-two caliber.”

  “How’s Harvey Draper holding up?”

  “He’s been keeping busy, like the rest of us. What do you mean, how is he holding up?”

  “I was up there yesterday just after they’d uncovered the Berkeley girl. It upset him some. Then I saw him again today for a few minutes. I’m not even going to tell you what we talked about. It was the sort of conversation you have when you’re trying to take your mind off things.”

  “The next time you and Harvey have one of those talks let me join in, okay?”

  When I hung up I thought for a moment about the next call I had to make, and decided to give myself a break. I got up from behind the desk and strolled out across the reception area and went into the suite of rooms occupied during the day by Sloe and Morrisey. I went to the portable bar and refrigerator along one wall of the legal eagle conference room and poured myself a stiff gin and tonic.

  I stood leaning against the bar for a moment, sipping the drink. Then I raised the gin bottle and topped it off before closing things up and wandering back over to my own side of the office.

  I tapped out the number I had to call. Bobbie answered the phone and I asked for Maribeth.

  “I want to speak to you after you’re through,” Bobbie told me quietly.

  “Sure.”

  “Not from here, though. I’ll go down to the pay phone in the lobby. Where are you calling from?”

  I gave her the office phone number and wondered, now what?

  When Maribeth came to the phone I brought her up to date with the identities of the newly unearthed and what other background information Barry Smith had given me. None of it meant anything to her. It was getting to the point where neither one of them really expected it to.

  “What have you been doing?” I asked her.

  “Reading. Watching television. Trying to keep my mind tame. Do you think this is the end of it then?”

  “The others seem to think so. The sergeant said they did quite a bit of scratching around out there after the last victim was recovered. They think it’s finished, for now at least.”

  I could have bitten my tongue as I said it. I knew what her reply would be.

  “That means it’s my turn, maybe.”

  “Maribeth, do you have an extra room I could flop in? Or would you like me to sleep on the sofa or something? Would it make you feel any better?”

  “No, I’m not worried about being here in my own apartment. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t wanted to leave it. Whatever might happen to me isn’t going to happen here. I was terribly uncomfortable last night, but I didn’t feel fear. God, Peter, I wish I could understand more.”

  “Maybe we all will before much longer. Learning that two of the male victims knew each other is the first real break the sheriff’s people have had. It’s like an opening wedge. They should be able to exploit that. A common thread is what they’ve been searching for all through this.”

  We chatted a few moments more before saying goodnight. I replaced the receiver and sat staring at it. Bobbie probably was on her way down to the apartment building lobby to phone me. What would she have to tell me that she didn’t want her aunt to hear?

  I got up and walked back through the reception area into the legal eagle conference room and fixed myself another stiff gin and tonic. The phone was ringing when I got back to the office.

  “Bragg.”

  “Hi,” Bobbie said. “I told Maribeth I was going around the block for a little fresh air. But she probably didn’t believe me. She thought it odd that I didn’t want to talk to you when she was finished.”

  “Why all the mystery?”

  “I shouldn’t have done what I did last night. I just wanted you to understand that even if you might, incredibly, get your head on straight, we couldn’t do anything like that. Not right now at least.”

  “Is this the prudish side of your nature?”

  “What prudish side? I just shouldn’t have spent the night away from my aunt. She had a wretched time of it. She seemed knocked out when I left, but apparently she didn’t stay that way. I don’t think she had more than a couple of hours sleep.”

  “She told me she had an uncomfortable night. Did you tell her where you had been?”

  “Yes, I told her. I didn’t tell her it didn’t amount to anything, but I told her where I was. I think she’s quite pleased about it, actually. But that’s all beside the point. It’s that I wasn’t with her, there in that apartment, that seemed to upset her. And when I asked why, the poor dear just screwed up her face and threw out her hands. She doesn’t know. That’s what the problem is. With her gift, as she calls it, she’s bombarded with twice the impressions most of us are exposed to. And so during the bad times it’s as if she has double the confusion and anxiety. She can’t put her finger on it. She suffers, deeply.”

  “What did you two decide about the interview that Welch wants to do?”

  “I’ll do it. But it would have to be during the day, and somewhere other than near the apartment building here.”

  “Okay, I’ll let him know.”

  When we hung up I phoned Cliff Welch to tell him Bobbie was willing to do the interview and talk about her aunt. The cameraman was out so I left the message on his machine.

  I put down the receiver, stared at the phone and thought about Allison France.

  The phone rang. It was Sharon Rapler, office chief. Proud Senegalese. Earth mother. Actually her family wasn’t from Senegal, they were from Oakland, California, but that’s what she had told me to tell people if they asked.

  “I was beginning to think you’d left the country,” she complained.

  “My days have been busy. I’ve been doing some phone work here nights. I figured if anything important came up you’d leave a note.”

  “You’re right, I would. How goes it, as if I couldn’t tell by reading the newspapers and watching television?”

  “It goes gruesomely. Professional people are beginning to show the strain. My psychic client is getting more anxious and depressed by the day. I think Allison is getting it on with somebody up in Barracks Cove. I’ve had two stiff drinks out of the counselors’ gin bottle and don’t feel a thing from them. I have not a thought in the world about who planted all those bodies, or from what direction it might spell danger for the psychic lady. I’m stumped and angry, but at least it keeps the veil of grief at arm’s length. I think if I really started to dwell on some of those people who have been killed, the boy and the girl teenager…”

  There was a moment’s silence between us. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Sharon said finally.

  “You don’t know what you ask, Sharon, babe.”

  “Yes I do. I just passed it through brain control. Brain control reports back that you’ve got too much on your plate. It’s time to share. Not about Allison. I don’t want to hear about problems with your woman love. But the rest of it. All of it.”r />
  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  I took a deep breath. “You know, Sharon, you’re probably the smartest person I have ever met, and I love you.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, so I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Go get yourself another drink first.”

  “The bottle’s getting low.”

  “There’s more. Get yourself a drink.”

  So I walked over and poured another gin and tonic and carried it back to my office and told Sharon everything I could think to tell her about events of the past five days. When I had finished I felt as drained as the glass of gin and tonic and Sharon was quiet for several moments. She was thinking, she told me.

  “Maybe it’s a floppy,” she said finally.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like a photo negative that’s been flopped when it’s printed, so everything is backward. Man looks left in photo when he’s really looking right. Desk appears on one side of the room when it’s really on the other. An illusion.”

  “I’m too weak to follow you. Maybe it’s the last drink I had.”

  “I think somehow it’s all there, Peter. It’s just that none of us see it right. Murder, suicide, maximum grief. It’s almost as if somebody is putting on a tragic play. Think a minute about that anonymous phone call you had. If the story the caller told you was true and it was the killer he was talking to that night in the bar, then grief is a central theme here.”

  She lapsed into silence for several more moments.

  “Grief,” I said quietly. “It does seem to be slapping everybody in the face.”

  “That has to be it, Peter,” she said finally. “Follow the grief. Follow the grief and you’ll find the killer.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I had planned to start the next day at a relaxed pace. A couple of chores needed doing around the apartment but a couple of chores always needed doing. What I wanted to do was walk down the hill and across Bridgeway and find a place where I could just sit down and stare out across the water and think.

  I was out of the shower, had toweled off, climbed into shorts and old khaki pants and put on a pullover shirt that said “Phone Home” on the front of it when there was a pounding on the door. Nobody ever pounded on my door. I hustled out and stared through the small pane of glass at the grinning face of Sheriff’s Detective Rachel Goodwin. It wasn’t even 9:30 yet.

  “Surprise,” she told me when I opened the door. “Could a person get a cup of coffee, you think?”

  “I guess so, as long as you wipe your shoes off on the mat.”

  I crossed to the small kitchen while Rachel stood in the middle of the living room beyond the kitchen counter and wiggled her nose.

  “Smells as if this place could use an airing out.”

  “Leave the door open if you want.”

  She ignored the door but crossed to stare at one of the posters I had on a wall. It was probably a collector’s item by now, an early movie scene with Raquel Welch wearing animal skins and a frown. I had put water on the stove before going into the shower, and now poured it over a cone of coffee. When I turned again Rachel had come to the counter and put down her shoulder bag and settled on one of the padded bar stools. She rested her chin in her hands and watched me with a pleased smile on her face.

  “You look pretty self-satisfied,” I told her.

  “I’m feeling that way.”

  “My mother warned me to beware of self-satisfied women.”

  “Did she really?”

  “No. The truth is my mother really didn’t understand other women very well. How did you find this place?”

  “Why? Is it a secret or something?”

  “Not a total one. But I don’t like to think that some of the people I’ve dealt with could find it when I’m not expecting them. There’s no address listed in the phone book, and Barry Smith never asked me, so how did you find it?”

  “I’m a cop. We got our ways.”

  “Seriously, I’d like to know. I’d hate to think just anybody could get in here.”

  “Is that how you think of me now? Just anybody?”

  I shook my head and poured coffee into a pair of Navy surplus mugs. “It’s going to be one of those day, huh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “What do you take in your coffee?”

  “Cream and sugar.”

  “How about artificial sweetener and nonfat milk?”

  “If that’s the best you can manage.”

  “That’s it.” I put the coffee in front of her and the bowl of sweetener and carton of milk from the refrigerator next to it, then pulled over the stool I kept in the kitchen across the counter from where Rachel sat.

  Rachel sat and sipped her coffee, beaming at me over the lip of the mug. She was wearing a pair of tan slacks and a white blouse with red polka dots on it and a red scarf at her throat.

  “You’re looking very vibrant this morning,” I told her.

  “Thank you. I’m feeling that way. And it’s on account of you, and that is Reason Number One why I’m here.”

  I waited. She grinned at me.

  “Pershing made a very big mistake this morning. I think it’ll get him out of our hair altogether before long.”

  “What sort of mistake?”

  “He called me, to my face, a dyke.”

  I put down my coffee. “I can’t believe the man is that stupid.”

  “Oh, he is, he is. And you know, there was a time something like that would have absolutely crushed me? I come from a country background, Bragg. My family has lived and ranched up in Sonoma County for three generations. I know I’m a little rawboned and rather straightforward in my movements, and I talk a little bit like a hick part of the time, though that’s mostly play-acting. But the funniest thing, I have begun looking at myself in the mirror with a little more critical eye the past few days. And that’s because of what you said to me that day we met up at the state park. You said I was a pretty lady, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s not the sort of thing I ever spent time thinking about. I am very career oriented. It’s my way. I’m not interested in having a husband and kids. Not right now anyhow, and as soon as I started going through basic training at the law enforcement academy, any boyfriends I had sort of drifted out of my life. I didn’t figure that was any great loss, but I never think of myself as girl, but more as person. Until that day when you said what you did. And since then I’ve been taking a good look at myself in a full-length mirror in my bedroom just after I get out of the shower. And you know, you were right. I have an okay-looking body.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. I took a careful sip of my own.

  “And so this morning, at a very early squad meeting we were having in Smitty’s office, with Smitty and Pershing and the sheriff and three other male detectives and myself, Mr. Pershing and I got into a little discussion that turned into a bare-knuckle verbal exchange, and he finally got to his feet with his face all red and called me a Goddamned dyke and stormed out of the office.”

  She took another little sip of coffee. “Even two weeks ago that sort of thing might have floored me. But not now. Not after what you said and the way you got me started thinking. And what I did this morning was, I actually laughed. I mean, the sheriff and the other guys were all sitting on the edge of their chairs or standing at attention with their faces looking as if somebody had tossed quick-dry concrete on them, and I laughed. And so the others all relaxed some and I said, ‘What an asshole,’ and then all of them laughed.”

  I smiled. I could savor her moment. “I felt I was taking my life in my hands when I decided to say what I did to you. But it just seemed the right thing, somehow.”

  She waved one hand at me. “There’s more. And this is the part I came to thank you for. It’s what the sheriff did next. And I think the only reason he did it was because of what Pershing had said and the way I handled that. Because, hey, I haven’t been outshining everybody
else in this whole mess.”

  “Rachel, get to the point.”

  She beamed. “I’ve been named lead field investigator on this whole shebang.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I have carte blanche to go where my nose takes me. The other people do initial interviews. I get copies now. The sheriff said he can’t have Smitty devoting full time to the killings any longer. We have other crime, you know. So I’m lead sleuth. I go where I want when I want. I consult with Smitty, of course, but I don’t even have to go into the office every morning. And all of that is what I’m thanking you for, Bragg. It just might be the biggest opportunity of my professional life.”

  “I’m happy for you. But you could have picked up the phone and thanked me instead of driving all the way down here. And I still want to know how you found out where I live.”

  “That was a simple piece of cake,” she told me. “Is there more coffee?”

  I refilled the mugs.

  “The reason I came down here,” she said, accepting the mug with a nod, “was not just to swing by and see what a dump you live in.”

  “Hey, this is my home.”

  “Looks more like a zoo. Old jungle woman on the wall over there. The reason I’m here is because it’s on the way to the city. I want to talk to Maribeth.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s just—well, she’s a woman and I’m a woman. She’s the woman who started all this and I’m the woman who for now at least is charged with ending it. I just feel we should talk some more.”

  I considered it for a moment. “Maybe that’s a good idea. In fact, the way you put it, I think it’s a very good idea.”

  “I want you there too,” she told me. “That’s the second reason I came by here.”

  “Why me?”

  Rachel shrugged. “You’ve been a part of all this from the start. I think you’ve got a head on your shoulders. I think Maribeth will be a little more comfortable with you there.” She hesitated a moment. “And you bought me a beer yesterday.”

  I looked at her and she looked right back at me. “I’ll go change,” I told her.