Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (14 page)

“Or,” Saks offered, “as I intend to argue, those muddy tracks were made before or
even
after
the body was left. By a hunter or a couple of teenage
lovers. Made by one of those two million or so other vehicles with the same
front and rear track measurements.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “Maybe. And maybe the real killer did leave his car on the
gravel road and did drag the body into the woods, with all telltale signs of it
washed away by rain.”

“Exactly.”

Gus sat silently, thinking. After a moment, he raised his eyes back to Saks. “Can
you call Suffolk PD? Arrange for me to have access to both Lily’s and McAdams’
places? I’d like to nose around some.”

Saks reached to his intercom. “Agnes,” he said when his secretary responded. “Get
me Inspector Clarelli, Suffolk County Police.”

“Yes, Mr. Saks.”

Saks smiled at Gus. “I’ve got a good feeling here, Gus. Very good.”

 
The next morning, Saturday, March fifth, was crisp and clear, the
moist, salty Long Island air stirring the senses. Gus Oliver slowly drove his
powder-blue 1959 Edsel north on Central Islin’s Main Street. Just past
Dominick’s Shoe Repair, he swung the long hood of the car into a perpendicular
parking spot in front of the Optimo Tobacco and Candy Shop.

“Hello, Fred,” he said as he entered.

“Morning, Gus,” the man answered from behind the counter. “Where’s little Joey?
Ain’t it time for your usual Saturday mornin’ breakfast together over at the
drugstore?”

Gus shrugged. “Not this week, Fred. I had to disappoint my grandson. Got some
errand I need to run.”

“Too bad. What can I get you?”

Gus reached for his wallet. “A ten-pack of Polaroid film for my 80A
Highlander.”

Leaving, Gus turned the Edsel south and drove out of town. After passing Eddie’s
Texaco station, he turned east onto Motor Parkway. The powerful V-8 sped him
quickly to the small rural community of Shirley.

When he arrived at Lily O’Rourke’s four-room cabin, he was met by Shirley Police
Chief Gene Worthy.

“Seems to me, Gus, it oughta be Chief Carson from over in Mastic handlin’ this,”
Worthy said. “After all, the body was found in
his
town. Not mine.”

Gus smiled as he took the house keys from Worthy. “Yeah, well, that’s sure enough
true, Gene. But seems like you got him outnumbered some, what with the suspect
and
the victim from right here in your town.”

Worthy snorted. “Damn, Gus, they’re two city folk. Got no more to do with this
here place than the emperor of China.”

Later, with no discernible evidence in hand, the two men left the cabin.

“McAdams’ place is close enough to walk,” Gus said, and they strode along narrow,
tree-lined Heston Street.

The late Francis McAdams’ house was considerably larger than Lily’s cabin. It was
well set back from the road on a heavily treed three-quarter-acre lot. The
structure sat on unlandscaped, natural grounds, a blue gravel driveway leading
to a weathered garage. An old, unused outhouse was visible some sixty feet
behind the house, its door hanging loosely on one hinge. Gus and Worthy climbed
the five front steps of the house and crossed the sagging boards of the covered
front porch. Gus unlocked the door.

“Waste of time, you ask me,” Chief Worthy said. “The county boys been all over
this house, same as the woman’s. Anything of value, they already found. I’ll
take my oath on that.”

Gus looked around the darkened foyer. “Well, now, Gene, that most surely is true.
But I’d kinda like to cast my eyes around some anyway. You never know.”

Worthy shrugged. “If you don’t mind, Gus, I’d just as soon be on my way. You can
drop both sets of keys at my office after you’re done. I can’t see wastin’ my
Saturday pokin’ around in a dead man’s house when the murderer is already locked
up.”

Gus nodded. “Suit yourself.”

Worthy turned to leave. “Just give the keys to my deputy. If he ain’t there, toss
’em on the desk. Guess they’ll be safe enough.” He shook Gus’s hand and
left.

Much later, Gus exited the rear of the house and gazed around the expanse of land
surrounding the back porch. The property was bordered by thick woods, early buds
beginning to sprout on some of the mockernut hickory trees. Gus’s eyes fell upon
the abandoned outhouse. He stepped off the porch deck and crossed to it.

After a cursory examination of the dank, cobwebbed interior, Gus closed the door
and turned away. His eyes fell on the woods to his left, at the very rear of the
property. There, where wild shrubbery met the property line, the nearly obscured
opening of an old, long-unused footpath was visible. Gus’s eyes narrowed as he
gazed at it.

Born and raised on the rural, pristine lands of Long Island, Gus had spent many
childhood hours exploring the woods, streams, and lakes surrounding his hometown
of Central Islin. He had learned something as a very young boy: A path in the
woods always led to somewhere. A tadpole-and-frog-laden pond, a clear,
cool-water swimming hole, a shimmering crystal stream, or a scary,
haunted-looking hunter’s cabin. Somewhere.

Gus crossed the property, noting the remnants of an old-fashioned, homemade
cinder-block barbeque pit now choked with weeds. It seemed identical to the one
he recalled behind his grandfather’s old green-and-white bungalow on Connetquot
Avenue.

Smiling with his memories, Gus set out onto the path, following its meander for
some hundred feet through the woods. The path was heavily overgrown, having not
seen regular use in many years; Gus reasoned it dated back to the days when this
house and property had most likely served a growing family. As he neared the end
of the path, his suspicions were further confirmed. Some twenty feet above him
appeared the remains of a roughly built treehouse, constructed from differing
sizes and types of lumber, the skeletal remains forming a rough triangle amidst
three ancient oak trees. The lumber was mostly rotted away, dangling in some
places from large, heavily rusted ten-penny nails.

Gus stood there looking upward at the sight for long moments. Long ago, as a boy,
he and his cousin had built just such a treehouse. Their constant foot traffic
to and from that treehouse had created a path through the woods very similar to
the one where he now stood.

Glancing around one final time, he noticed something else. A few more yards
ahead, the woods seemed to open up. He followed the path a bit farther.

An old dirt lane, heavily rutted and about ten feet wide, ran parallel to the
rear of the McAdams property. Its existence did not surprise Gus. Long Island
was veined with many such lanes, none of which appeared on road maps. They
served the hunting blinds and trout streams, fishing holes and hidden copses of
hardwood trees that provided locals with firewood for long, snowy winters.

Most had originally been cut through the woods as fire breaks and access routes
for local fire-district volunteers. In the event of a wildfire, the lanes
allowed pumper trucks and personnel to get in close to fight the flames.

Gus had seen many such lanes in his lifetime and knew they always intersected
with main roadways. Much like the narrow, winding footpath he had just trod, the
narrow dirt lanes always led
somewhere.

Glancing around, he saw a flat expanse of grassy area bordering the lane. It was
some fifteen feet long and just wide enough to accommodate an automobile.

He ambled over to it. Unlike the badly rutted lane itself, this patch of flat,
weed-strewn grass had once been pristine. But now, as Gus frowned down at it,
his eyes narrowing in thought, it was not.

Cut into the flat ground were what seemed to be a set of tire tracks. Though worn
and weathered from months of exposure, they remained quite visible. Under the
warm March sun, the tracks were dried out but appeared to have been originally
cut at a time when the ground had been soft and muddied.

Gus recalled the weather-bureau information he had gathered: Around the time of
the murder, there had been an abundant accumulation of rain.

Something about the tracks seemed very odd to Gus, and he bent to one knee for a
closer look. After thirty years of policing, he had seen his share of
crime-scene tire tracks. But nothing quite like these.

Based on dried remnants of sprayed mud, Gus was able to identify the vehicle’s
drive wheels. But, as he knew, a car had only
one
drive wheel, either
left or right rear, depending on car make and model. The spray pattern he was
looking at indicated
two
drive wheels, not just one. And even more
perplexing, they each appeared to
turn
in unison as front-steer wheels
do. The mud splatter fanned out to the left in a broad, semicircular pattern.
The way Gus read the tracks, the car had first pulled off the lane and onto the
clearing, then at some point had accelerated sharply away, spinning its wheels
forcefully and spraying grass-clumped mud some ten feet into the low-lying
surrounding brush. But the drive wheels appeared to be at the
front
of
the vehicle—the steering wheels, not the fixed rear wheels.

Gus examined the rear tire tracks. They sat slightly inside the front tracks,
indicating a narrower rear track width, and no mud spray was visible. Gus, still
kneeling, scratched at his head. If it had been a four-wheel-drive vehicle, such
as a Jeep, all four wheels would have sprayed mud. But that clearly wasn’t the
case here. So what else could possibly explain drive wheels which also
steered
the car?

Gus stood slowly thinking. It was a long shot at best that these tracks had
anything to do with the McAdams case. But, by the same token,
someone
had parked here, and
someone
had left in a pretty damn big hurry.

That someone had driven a unique vehicle. One Gus had never come across before,
one potentially easy to identify.

And that vehicle surely needed identifying. Gus turned to the path, heading to
his car, still parked at Lily’s place. He needed the Polaroid camera and
measuring stick from his tool case.

 
When Gus arrived at Eddie’s Texaco and Repair Shop in Central Islin,
he parked and walked across the oil-stained concrete to the Bell System phone
booth nestled at the side of the repair bay. He deposited a dime and dialed the
Central Islin Police Department. His friend, Chief Bill Carters, answered.

Gus quickly filled him in, then got to the point. “I need you to take a look at
the county aerial photograph survey maps, Bill. Specifically, the town of
Shirley. Just east of the six hundred block of Heston Road there’s a dirt lane
that don’t show up on any street maps. I need to know if it leads to anything
and where it hits main paved roadways. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure, Gus. You figure this is important, do ya?”

“Could be. We’ll see. Check it out, then call me back. I’m over at Eddie’s
Texaco. I need his opinion on somethin’.”

“Okay. Call you back A-Sap.”

 
Sitting behind the station’s grease-stained counter beside an ornate
and ancient NCR cash register, Eddie Jacobs bent and carefully studied the six
Polaroid photos Gus had placed before him. With a musty oil-and-gasoline tinged
odor touching at his nostrils, Gus spoke up.

“Tell me, Eddie: What the hell does that look like to you?”

The mechanic shrugged. “Tire marks in dried-out mud. What’s it supposed to look
like?”

Gus pointed. “Take a look at that spray pattern. See where it appears to be
coming from? The
front
of the car—and from
both
wheels. And
look, see how those two wheels turn, steer the car out off that lane-side
cutaway and out onto the lane itself? Now, how in the hell is that
possible?”

Eddie studied the photos once more. “Well, it ain’t a four-wheeler, like a Jeep
or a Dodge Power Wagon. See here, the rear wheels are just followin’ along
meek-like. They don’t appear to have spit out any mud.”

“No, and they both track straight, they’re
fixed,
that’s how I know
they’re
rear
wheels. If they were the drive wheels, they’da sprayed mud
straight back, not fanned out in an arc pattern like those steer wheels did. But
there’s no dried spray to the rear.”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, sounds about right. So what you need me for, Gus? Seems you
got it all figured.”

Gus shook his head. “I been drivin’ since I first snuck my granddaddy’s Model 20
Hupmobile outta the barn when I was ten years old. I never once seen a vehicle
could put down tracks like these.”

Eddie squared the photos into a neat pile with his permanently oil-stained right
hand and gave them back to Gus. “No, I don’t figure you woulda, ’cause the
vehicle that left them tracks was a front-wheel driver. Back in the thirties,
Cord made a few front drivers. Built ’em upstate somewheres. They only lasted a
coupla years and cost as much as a damn Cadillac. See, Cord figured front
drivers was gonna be the next big thing, but hell, who wants a car with the
front wheels drivin’
and
steerin’ it? Makes steerin’ real tough, like
drivin’ a damn snowplow.” He shrugged. “You’ll never see them again, Gus. Not in
this country, anyways.”

Gus thought for a moment. “What do you mean, not in this country?”

Eddie, a World War II veteran who had served as a motor-pool sergeant, shrugged
again. “Well, now, when I was over in France, I come into possession of an old
Citroën. French-built car, real piece a crap and the ugliest machine on God’s
green earth. But it beat walkin’, so me and a buddy of mine fixed that old car
up, got it runnin’ again. It drove even worse’n it looked, real bad heavy feel
to the steerin’, ‘torque-steer’ we called it, felt like drivin’ a bulldozer.”
Here he paused, smiling. “Served us pretty well with a coupla local Frenchie
gals, though, as I recall. Far as I know, Citroëns are still front drive.”