The Long Lavender Look Part 20

"And you took out the part about Mrs. Kapp."

"Mr. McGee took me to the place where he thought he saw her, but he was apparently mistaken."

"I don't want to upset you, Sher'f, but shouldn't your chief deputy know what the h.e.l.l is-"

"Come back here after you send that off and I'll tell you."

When the door shut, I said, "Many thanks."

"I'll try to stick with that, McGee. But if somebody goes on trial for killing Lillian, I'm not going to turn over a doctored file to the State's attorney for grand jury indictment. You'll have to go back into the picture, and with that weapon he had to stab you with, and with the photographs of the holes in the trailer, you should be able to satisfy the court that it was self-defense. I will testify that you made immediate confession, but that I kept it quiet for the sake of not giving the killer too much free information. Raise your right hand."

It had a lot of golden ornamentation and an eagle and three shades of colored enamel, red, white, and blue. It said that I had finally finked out all the way, and was a sworn deputy sheriff of Cypress County Florida, with all the rights and privileges pertaining there-to. There was a wallet card with the sheriff's signature and mine. And I pinned the badge inside the wallet, and practiced flipping it open a few times, thinking of how Meyer would laugh himself into hiccups.

Billy Cable came in as I made the final practice flip, and tucked the wallet away. His eyes bulged. "Norm!" he wailed. "I mean, Sheriff. Him? After all!"

The whip cracked, and Cable came to sudden attention. Hyzer said, "You are the best officer I have, Cable. And in ninety-five percent of your duty a.s.signments you are superior. In the remaining five percent you turn into a vain, stupid, inept man, causing me more trouble than you are worth. Do you know what this flaw is?"

"I... ah... no, sir!"

"I request you to make a guess, then."

"I guess... well, sometimes I maybe let my own personal feelings... Sir, a man can't be a machine!"

"Cable, off duty you will let your feelings and your emotions and your prejudices slop all over your personal landscape. You can roll and wallow in them. On duty, on my time, you will be a machine. Is that absolutely clear?"

"Yes, sir." It was a very small "yes, sir." Cable was swaying. Only the most effective chewing can make a grown man sway.

"Temporary Deputy McGee will be privately a.s.signed by me, and will not be subject to your authority or control in any way, nor will you make any mention of his status. Now go and shake his hand and welcome him to this department."

Cable came over. His eyes looked slightly gla.s.sy and his palm was damp. "Deputy... glad to... hope you enjoy your..."

"Thanks, Billy. The name is Trav."

"Now you can both sit down," Hyzer said. "We will discuss McGee's theory of gravitation, and the identification of unknown influences. Billy, I made out a schedule of... recent events. I checked out the duty cards and duty reports, and I have placed your approximate location and activities in the righthand column. I see no chance of your having been involved directly in any way."

"For G.o.d's sake, Sheriff! If you think I-"

"Didn't we just have a little discussion about emotion?"

"... Sorry, sir."

"This is a guide, merely to show you how I want a special project handled. You are the sample. I want you to run these six deputies through the same thing, without letting anyone know what you are checking out. I want you to make certain that the deputy cards and duty reports are correct as to the hours involved."

"Somebody in the family?" Billy asked.

"McGee thought it had to be either you or me. It isn't either of us. So let's be certain it isn't any of us."

For one precarious moment, full of fellowship and conscious of the ornate badge of authority, I wanted to give them the full report on Lew Arnstead, so it could be added to Hyzer's list of unusual events. Sure, and good old Betsy would swear to every word of it as being the truth. I would bounce about three times right on the place where now the badge rested, and hear the steel door clang.

Hyzer stared with raised eyebrows at Cable until suddenly Cable came to with a start and hopped up and hurried out of the office.

"And that leaves us," said Mister Norm, "with two more places to go. Or three. Lew Arnstead. Mrs. Kapp could have guessed where he would be, could have known about that hideaway shack gone out there, and found him closing the store, picking up the money, getting ready to move."

"And forgot where the safe was?"

"Or tore the place up after he killed Mrs. Kapp to make it look like a stranger. Relocked the safe and tore the door off."

"Was he that subtle?"

"Any police officer learns what other police officers look for and how they make their judgments. Acquired subtlety, call it. He knew that Lillian had tricked him and left that envelope of yours in the Baither place. So he goes after her. And he finds her."

"You said three possibilities?"

"Somebody trying to either get a woman free and clear of Arnstead for good, or get even for what happened to the woman."

"Featherman?"

"A possibility. Maybe Mrs. Kapp arrived and found someone there, and Arnstead was there, dead. He could be under those pine needles too."

"The black jeep hidden on Betsy's street doesn't fit that one."

"Or the first one, either. Unless we get too fancy, and jam pieces into the puzzle whether they fit or not. Lew abandoned the jeep there to cause confusion. Or somebody picked him up right there and took him out to his shack."

"Or, Sheriff, Henry and Lillian killed him because they couldn't risk you finding out who engineered leaving that envelope. Maybe Henry and Lillian knew about that shack and they had to make sure Arnstead hadn't hidden anything out there that could tie them into Baither's death. And Betsy walked into that scene."

"That was my third guess," he said. "Save the best until last."

"Lillian knew about the shack. That photograph of her in that batch in your desk drawer was taken out there. Remember that clock on the wall?"

He took them out, found hers and studied it. "Very good, Deputy. Observant."

"When you find yourself in a sling, it's time to start thinking clearly or start running."

He put the pictures back, slammed the drawer hard. "Around and around and around," he said. "The mythological animal that grabs its own tail and starts eating and disappears down its own throat."

"A fifth man in on the money-truck job? Or maybe Henry and Lillian nailed either Hutch or Orville, but not both."

"We're going further and further into the mist," he said. "So we haul it back to specifics. Mrs. Kapp's car might tell us something. There are hundreds of little tracks across that scrubland up there. Tomorrow I call in a chopper for an air search. The biggest specific is the plausible a.s.sumption Lillian told someone what she learned from Frank Baither. That bucket technique is efficient. She would probably try some lies. So the technique is to keep at it until you get the same answer time and again."

"Do you have any idea how powerful she was?"

"Yes. I saw one demonstration. I see your point. Either one strong person or two people to handle her like that, even taped up."

"I'd buy two."

Then he told me my a.s.signment. We checked the inventory of confiscated weapons, and I settled for a Ruger standard carbine in.44 Magnum, with a five-round capacity, four in a front tube and one in the chamber. I'd had one aboard the Busted Flush for a time and had used it on shark coming after the hooked billfish, until one day I had decided that the shark was doing his thing, and it was b.l.o.o.d.y and disrespectful to kill an honest scavenger just because he happened to come into the ball park when you are trying to win. From that day on, the rule when fishing from the Munequita, after towing it to billfish country behind the Flush, was that the lookout would yell out when he saw the first fin, and you would release the billfish then and there instead of later, at the side of the boat. We do not bring dead meat home and hang it high for the tourists to say Aaah over. We take a picture of the good ones as somebody leans down to clip off the leader wire. The stainless hook corrodes out of the marlin, tuna, or sailfish jaw in days, leaving him free to go take the dangling bait of the commercial long-liners, fight his heart away against the resistance of the buoys, and, after the shark have browsed this free lunch, leave his jaw or his whole head on the hook for the deckhands to haul up and toss away on the pickup round.

So I knew it would fire five 240-grain slugs as fast as I could pull the trigger, bust each one right through a seven-inch pine tree, and had a reasonable accuracy for a weapon a yard long overall, weighing less than six pounds.

They had grabbed it off a poacher. Norm Hyzer approved of the choice and gave me a handful of jacketed factory loads. After he explained what I was to do, I asked if I could have another few pieces of equipment. So he drove me to the shopping center and pointed out the hardware store that stayed open late. I bought my junk, and then hit the supermarket and provisioned myself for a forty-eight-hour vigil. Hyzer said he would check me out of the White Ibis after he dropped me off, and put my gear in the rental car and shut it up in his own garage, well out of sight.

It was ten-thirty when he dropped me off at the Baither place, wished me luck, and drove off.

It took longer than usual for my vision to adjust to the night. Priority one was slathering myself with repellent before a couple dozen of the more muscular hummers got together and lifted me up and wedged me into a tree to consume at their leisure. I checked out the pump house by leaving the flashlight on inside, closing the door, and waiting again for night vision to see how much light came out. It was pretty good. A narrow crack above the k.n.o.b, and a wider gap at the bottom. I could fix those on the inside by cutting some strips from one of the old blankets inside.

It took over an hour to set it up the way I wanted it. I had bought enough wire so I could take the long way through the brush from the pump house to the old wooden bridge. I turned out my flashlight each time I heard a car coming. In time I located an old gray warped plank with the right gap underneath and enough give to it. I taped my little bra.s.s terminals from a dismembered flashlight to the warped underside and to the supporting timber. I brought the buzzer along the road and put it down close enough to hear it from the bridge. There was no way to walk across or drive across without closing the circuit.

For somebody who, for some reason, wanted to come in from another direction, I used the primitive old black thread and rattle-can device. Closed the pump house door, turned on the flashlight, covered the cracks, made and wolfed a pair of thick sandwiches, drank a quart of the almost-cool water. Stretched out on the narrow cot to find the place to prop the weapon where my hand would find it with no fumbling, no loss of time.

Turned the light out, opened the door, stretched out on the cot again. I invited sleep by willing the relaxation of neck and shoulders. Deputy McGee on duty. It is to laugh. Or cry.

And I let myself down into that dark turbulence knowing I would find there the dusty-looking eyes of Arnstead, and Betsy playing her lavender game with stomach-turning grimace, and a flat steel handle sticking straight out of a twill armpit, and the foam caked into the corner of the dead mouth of the mad young girl.

Twenty.

AT FIRST light I got up and checked my warning system, took my thread and tin cans down and stowed them under the cot. Later, at sunup, I prowled the area, locating logical access so I could do a better job of hooking up the dangle-cans at nightfall.

I found a way of wedging the pump house door so it would appear to be locked if anybody tried it. Hyzer did not want the seals broken on the doors to the Baither house. I found a window catch I could slip, and climbed in over the sill. The wide white tape still dangled from the armchair where Baither had died, and under the chair and in front of it were the crusted black places on the brown rush rug where his blood had dried.

I found a shady thicket with a good view of the terrain and settled in, carbine beside me. There was a nostalgia about it. Not the warm kind, with the misted eye and the sad smile. The other kind, that sucks the belly muscles in, and gives you access to the old automatic habits of survival, such as holding half a breath from time to time while you listen to bird sounds and bug sounds, waiting for them to stop in some unseen area. Listening for some little clink or jingle of equipment, or oiled snick of weaponry being readied. Nostrils widen and you snuff the faint movement of the breeze, for taint of alien sweat. You move a little bit from time to time because if you remain still, muscles can lock and when you must move, it might be necessary to move quick as a lizard, or take the hammer blow of unexpected automatic weapon.

At eleven the bridge boards rattled and an old white Mustang came in, packed with kids: two bleached boys in the bucket seats, three limber, noisy, bikinied young girls sitting high on the downfolded top. The driver swung it around the old red pickup so spiritedly, one of the girls nearly fell off. The girl in the middle grabbed her. They stopped and I could hear them clearly from my sundappled thicket.

"Tommy! You ba.s.sar, you like to kee-yul me, doon that crazy kind of drivin'."

"Not ef you land on your haid, Bunny Lee." They piled out and went to the house and circled it, peering in every window. I heard the girls saying how spooky it was. They were all telling each other what happened to Frank Baither.

"Let's bust in and get a good look," one of the boys said.

"h.e.l.l with that," the other said. "Ol Hyzer has got it sealed. You maybe want him on your a.s.s? Not me."

"Come on," the first one said. "Look at old Norma Jean here. She's dead set on getting in there and making out with me in old Baither's sack."

"That's gra.s.s talking, G.o.ddam you Tommy!" a girl said.

The girls were slapping at their bare legs and shoulders. One of them said, "Get me out of here, you guys. I'm about to get et up. There's nothing here. Let's go bug old Dolores."

They ran for the car, piled in and charged out, shrilling the tires when they hit the paved road.

I took another tour. There was a crude patio off the other side of Baither's house, about twelve feet square, three steps down from a sealed door to the living room. It had a low wall around it of block painted pale blue. There were some planting pots with dead sticks coming out of the baked dirt inside. The patio area was paved with solid cement block a little larger than s...o...b..xes. They had been laid on tamped earth with sand poured between the cracks and watered down. It had been a sloppy job. The rainy season had washed the foundation uneven. Weeds grew out of the cracks. An old redwood chair, bleached gray, with a broken arm, crouched in a corner. Some blocks were missing.

I sat for a little while on the low wall, being scolded by a blue jay. I was thinking of Betsy Kapp in her grave up near the other end of Cypress County. And something in the back of my mind was looking at more immediate things, and finally sent the message upstairs that it seemed odd that some of the blocks looked paler and newer than others.

So I squatted and lifted one out and turned it over and replaced it and had the answer. Hyzer had directed a thorough search. So the blocks had been taken up and they had done some digging, or some probing with sharpened reinforcing rod, and had then replaced the patio floor. They had not taken the time or trouble to replace them all the same side up as they had been before. So the ones which went back in upside down looked a little newer. They had not had as much time to weather.

In fact, they had not even taken the trouble to put them all back. Four were missing from the far corner.

Everyone has their own fund of small idiotic compulsions. There are people who have to have their papers perfectly aligned with the edge of the desk. There are picture straighteners, and compulsive cleaners of ashtrays. I am a jigsaw freak. If I find myself in a room where there is a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, I find myself circling, then hovering, then finding the piece that goes here and the piece that goes there. Small triumphs. I cannot stand the sight of a fishrod rack that will hold five rods and has only four rods in the clips. I go through life fitting objects into their obvious and proper places.

So while thoughts moved away from the scene, back to the trailer this time, Henry circling it, I went scuffing through the rank gra.s.s and weeds, back and forth, around and around the three sides of the patio, moving further away from it, hunting for the block that would satisfy my moronic sense of order and fitness.

I woke up about forty feet out from the patio. No block. Irritation. What the h.e.l.l did they do with it? Pause for thought. Okay. So they searched the patio. Took up all the block. Piled it out to the side, probably, but close. No need to tote it an inch further than necessary. Very probably they had piled it on the broad low wall.

So maybe there hadn't been quite enough block to pave the patio in the first place, and I was looking for something that didn't exist.

I went over to the corner and gave it close inspection. No, dammit. You could see the oblong depressions in the dirt underneath. And here was where one of the vine weeds had been torn when they had been lifted out. Green at the root end, and brown beyond the tear.

I straightened up and stood with my mouth hanging open. I stood in a comic strip, with a big light bulb suspended in s.p.a.ce over my head.

I heard Lennie Sibelius, in that resonant and flexible voice, "... medium height with a bull neck and very broad thick shoulders. As a kid he had worked for his uncle who operated a little yard making cement block, and he had carried enough tons of mix and tons of finished block to give him that muscular overdevelopment."

My light bulb faded and dimmed. Hold it a minute, temporary deputy. Wouldn't a brand new patio completed during Frank's two weeks before he went to jail stand out like one very large and very inflamed thumb? And this block looks old. Maybe twenty years old.

But Baither had that old truck and he could take the original block far away and dump it. And he could add stain and dirt to the next mix. I yanked a block out and put it on its side on top of the wall. I yanked a second block out and slammed it down on the first one. It bounced off and nearly landed on my instep. The second smash broke a corner off. The third blow broke it open like a walnut. The meat inside the sh.e.l.l was the right size and shape. It had to be skinned. I got down to two banded packets of ten-dollar bills. Two thousand racetrack dollars. It had been wrapped in heavy plastic, tightly taped, then dipped in paraffin. From then on the process could be easily guessed. Pour a layer in the bottom of the greased wooden mold. When it started to set up, put the package on it, well centered, and finish the pour.

One h.e.l.l of a lot of work, Mr. Baither. Two weeks of it. Off somewhere, probably, where you wouldn't be disturbed. Truck it in and lay it down, trying to make it look as beat as the original block, chipping it, scarring it. You could have added a little rock salt to the mix to get the right pitted effect. You must have been tired, fellow, when you finally got shoved into a cell.

I never would have found it or thought of it had not those four been missing, and had I not seen from the broken weed that they had been taken recently. Somebody would have been in a sweat to make certain that the water treatment had gotten the truth out of Lilo Perris. So they had nipped in and grabbed samples last evening, before Hyzer posted me here.

Dilemma. Turn the whole thing over to Hyzer right now. He had said, "Unless you get a visitor, don't call me and blow the cover. I'll get in touch with you."

Explicit. Follow orders. But first take certain steps which are part precaution, part ugly surprise.

I found a rusty old pickax behind the pump house. I soon learned the force required to pop the blocks open without gouging the cash. I stacked the waxed oblongs on the broad wall. There were one astonishing number of blocks in a twelve-by-twelve s.p.a.ce, and I found only seven which were solid all the way through.

I improvised a Santa sack out of a frayed old army blanket from the pump house. I made it in five heavy loads, and I didn't finish the job until four-thirty. I crawled into my thicket, aching and winded and incomparably smug. Some very sneaky thoughts came sidling into my mind. With a little applied intelligence a man ought to be able to tie himself up impressively, and give himself a good thump on the head... "My G.o.d, Sheriff, he must have gotten behind me somehow. I never got a look at him."

It would figure out to about twenty years of splendid living. Untraceable. Spendable. With n.o.body with an ugly disposition coming looking for it, and you. Maybe.

I remembered Meyer telling me that if I ever scored very very big, I had the natural tendency to turn into a one-hundred-percent b.u.m. "And when you lose that last one percent," he said, "I might find you dreary. Sporadic monetary anxiety becomes you. It keeps you polite."

When the sun was very low, I began to make my preparations for the night. I was near the pump house when the buzzer sounded, and as a wind had come up I could not tell whether it had been a vehicle or a footstep which had done it. I ducked around behind the pump house, and heard the car, looked around and saw the green sedan with the blue flashers on the roof.

So I came out, carbine in hand, a tired and honest man ready and willing to make his honest report to his honest temporary boss man. But it was King Sturnevan who pulled his bulk out from behind the wheel and watched me approach, his back to the round golden sun.

"King," I said, "I hope you're delivering groceries and a cold beer."

"If I'd thought of it, pally I'd of done just that."

"Then suppose you go tell Mister Norm it would be very nice if he would bring one hot sandwich and one cold beer to the recruit."

"Tell him and duck?"