Little Dog Laughed (10 page)

“Who is it?” Dave called, and stepped aside.

No one answered. Dave put his back against the wall next to the door. He looked up at the loft. Cecil had put on white jeans. These were all Dave could see of him, standing at the top of the stairs—these and the glint of the gun he held straight out, pointed at the door. A throat was cleared outside in the night.

“Is that Mr. Brandstetter?” The voice sounded afraid.

“The name is on the mailbox,” Dave said. “Who’s asking?”

The throat was cleared again. “Pierce Glendenning.”

Dave unbolted and unchained the door and pulled it open. Glendenning was in nonclerical clothes, a tweed jacket, polo shirt with broad green stripes, chinos, and old hightop calfskin shoes. He looked young, the square, not-quite-handsome face smooth, as if life had rarely troubled him much. It was the thinning gray hair that aged him, and the unstylish wire-rim glasses. And the panic that swam in the pale hazel eyes behind those glasses now. “Come in,” Dave told him.

“I didn’t kill Adam Streeter,” Glendenning said. He stepped past Dave, and Dave caught the smell of sweat—not from physical exertion, from fear. Dave closed the door and touched a light switch beside it. Lamps went on at either end of the long, comfortable corduroy couch that faced the big fireplace halfway down the room. Glendenning said, “I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t do it.” Then he caught sight of Cecil standing on the loft, still pointing the gun. “Dear God,” he said.

Dave smiled faintly at Cecil. “You can put it away now.”

Cecil relaxed his stiff-armed pose. “That’s nice,” he said, and moved out of sight. Dave heard the drawer of the chest open, close. When Cecil came loose-jointedly down the stairs, he was pulling a T-shirt over his head. He smiled at Glendenning, who looked frightened of him, while Dave introduced them. “Don’t take the gun personally,” Cecil said, shaking his hand. “We didn’t know who you might be. Friends don’t often come calling at this time of day.”

“I’m sorry.” Glendenning’s face reddened. “I forgot the hour. I … it took me … I had to work up my resolve.”

Dave moved off toward the couch. “Come sit down.”

“I don’t want to keep you,” Glendenning said. “It’s the wrong time. I’ve interrupted your sleep.”

“What about coffee?” Cecil said.

Standing back to the fireplace, Dave said, “There’s a lot to talk about. You’re in deep trouble, Reverend.”

Glendenning looked sick. “I didn’t know anyone saw me.

“And heard you,” Dave said. “A close neighbor of Streeter’s, just across the patio—Lily Gernsbach. And a visiting friend, Sarah Winger.”

Did Glendenning hear? He looked stunned. At last, he said faintly to Cecil, “Yes, coffee, thank you,” and nodded. He turned Dave a look of weary surrender and walked toward the couch. Dave asked Cecil, “Shall I fix the coffee?”

“You talk,” Cecil said. “I’ll fix it.”

“I must have been literally blind with rage.” Glendenning dropped numbly onto the couch. He sat forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, fingers knitted, head bowed. He might have been praying, only he seemed not up to it. “You read those expressions and you think you know what they mean, but you don’t.” He looked up wanly. “Not until it happens to you.”

Cecil went out and left the door to the courtyard open. The cool air that comes an hour before sunrise washed into the room. The canyon was still quiet. No cars passed along the main road below. The crickets had left off. So had the mockingbirds, those all-night singers. Distantly Dave heard the door of the cookshack open, heard Cecil work the hand pump for spring water and rattle the filled teakettle onto a burner of the mighty stove.

“Streeter’s windows were open,” Dave said to Glendenning. “And directly opposite, the windows of Gernsbach’s master bedroom were also open.”

“I went to kill him that day,” Glendenning said.

Dave sat on the raised stone hearth. “With what?”

“I’d written him a letter. I wish I had that letter back.”

“His papers were stolen by whoever killed him,” Dave said. “The police don’t have them.”

“They’ll get them,” Glendenning said cheerlessly. “And they’ll read my letter and know I threatened to kill him. He phoned and asked me to come see him so he could explain.” Glendenning’s laugh was brief and bitter. “As if he could explain away the wanton killing of an innocent young boy.”

“Streeter didn’t kill him. Wantonly or otherwise.”

Glendenning sat up, stiff with indignation. “He gave him wanton advice. Reckless, heedless, irresponsible. Rue trusted him. And he sent him off to be killed.”

“So you wrote the letter,” Dave said, “and Streeter asked you to come see him, and you went to kill him to avenge your son’s death—a life for a life. How were you going to do that? How were you going to kill him? With what?”

“My son’s gun. He’d bought it after Streeter advised him to go to Central America. If he wanted to get off to a running start as a foreign correspondent. To go where—”

“Where the action was,” Dave said.

“Rue was a gentle, quiet boy,” Glendenning said. “I don’t mean he wasn’t manly, but he didn’t believe in violence. If it hadn’t been for Adam Streeter, he’d never have dreamed of buying a firearm, something that could kill another human being.”

“Gentle, quiet, but ambitious, right?” Dave said. “In a hurry to make his mark in the world.”

A corner of Glendenning’s mouth twisted sadly. “I didn’t say he wasn’t young, did I? Aren’t we always in a hurry to leave childhood behind, get out on our own, prove ourselves strong and capable?”

“It was a Desert Eagle pistol, wasn’t it?” Dave said. “And that was what you fought over, there in Streeter’s workroom. And that was why the fight ended so abruptly. Because he was bigger and stronger and got it away from you.”

Glendenning bent forward again, hung his head again. “Yes,” he murmured. “It was easy for him. He laughed at me as if I were a little boy, opened a drawer, dropped the gun inside.”

“Where it stayed,” Dave said, “until he tried to defend himself with it against attackers stronger than he was, who took it away from him and killed him with it. Was it your son who had it fitted with a silencer?”

Glendenning shook his head. “I did that. Later.”

“Why did your son leave the gun behind?”

“The airline wouldn’t let him take it.”

“Right. And Streeter knew that. So buying the gun was your son’s own idea. Which suggests to me that Streeter gave him a fair picture of the danger he was flying into. I don’t call that irresponsible.”

Glendenning started to answer, and Cecil came in with mugs of coffee on a tray. He set the tray on the hearth near Dave. Spoons lay on the tray beside a squat brown pottery pitcher of cream, a squat brown sugar bowl. Glendenning wanted his coffee black; Dave wanted a cigarette with his coffee and climbed to the loft to get the pack and his lighter. He heard Cecil stir sugar and cream into his coffee and ask:

“Did your son talk to you about Los Inocentes—what he hoped to find there?”

“He wanted to get to the insurgents, the rebels, to live with them if he could, to tell their side of the story.” Glendenning gave a brief dismal laugh. “And they killed him, didn’t they?”

“That’s how the government tells it,” Cecil said.

Dave found his cigarettes and lighter on the bedside stand and came down out of the loft darkness into the lamplight again. He sat down on the hearth, lit a cigarette, tried his coffee, and thought of lacing it with brandy. He looked down the room to the bar in deep shadow under the new section of loft. But he didn’t go there.

Glendenning said, “He also hoped to prove there were American special forces fighting the rebels in the hills. Something Washington always denies.”

“If it’s true,” Cecil said, “maybe they killed him.”

Glendenning brooded over his coffee mug. “I’m sick about the whole thing. Sick to the heart.”

“When you leave here,” Dave said, “go to Parker Center and find Detective Sergeant Jeff Leppard and tell him where the Desert Eagle came from.”

Glendenning’s head jerked up. His glasses magnified the dismay in his eyes. “Must I? What good will it do?”

“They’re trying to hang the killing on Mike Underhill,” Dave said. “A man who worked for him. And I don’t think it was Underhill. You can’t let them convict the wrong man.”

“Why was he the wrong man? Anyone could have used the gun. I didn’t have it that night. Adam Streeter had it.” Glendenning got up quickly, set the mug on the hearth, stood talking down at them. “What you’re asking me to do is bring disgrace not just on myself, but on my wife, my parish, my whole denomination. I’m morally guilty, I know that. Guilty before God, and don’t think I’m not miserable about it. But I did not kill that man.”

“It was your son’s gun,” Dave said, “fitted with your silencer. You were serious enough about killing him to buy that. You hated him, and I wonder if that stopped. I wonder if, a few days later, you didn’t buy a pair of wire cutters.”

Glendenning gaped. “What are you talking about?”

“The guard on the gate at Streeter’s place says you didn’t pass her that night. But that night someone cut the fence in back of the place. Someone crossed the marina by water in the dark, cut the fence, and—”

“No. Absolutely not. Fantastic.”

“My guess could have been wrong. That Streeter took the gun away from you and kept it.”

“He did. But even if he hadn’t—I wasn’t at the marina that night. I was at County USC Medical Center. A parishioner was taken violently sick—Tom Fraser. Fine man. My deacon. I was there with his family, wife, daughter, son, until the emergency surgery was completed, and they told us he was out of danger. I got the call around midnight, and it was daylight by the time I left the hospital.”

“And the doctor’s name?” Dave said.

“Scheinwald,” Glendenning said. “Ask him, if you must.”

“If there isn’t any need,” Dave said, “then you can tell Leppard about the gun, can’t you? And save yourself embarrassment later. Because eventually he’ll come asking you about it. And if he doesn’t, Underhill’s lawyers are bound to.”

“I’ll lie. I’ll say it was stolen. Why not?” Glendenning smiled wretchedly. “I’m damned anyway.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Dave said.

“Oh, no.” Glendenning’s laugh was sharp and despairing. “I meant to kill that man. And I would have done it, too, if he hadn’t been quicker than I was.” He turned away, shoulders slumping. His voice was hollow. “I lost my son. And then I lost my soul.” He moved heavy-footed out of the lamplight. “I’m no longer fit to be a priest.” He stepped out the open door into the courtyard. “What in the world am I going to do with the rest of my life?” The crackle of dry leaves under his shoes grew faint and passed out of hearing. Distantly, a car door slammed, an engine started, the noise of the car faded out down the canyon. Dave switched off the lamps. Gray light filled the doorway.

“It’s morning,” Cecil said.

“Not for him,” Dave said.

“County USC Medical is near my workplace,” Cecil said. “You want me to check out Dr. Scheinwald before I take up my oar in the galley? The Tom Fraser family?”

“I’ll be forever in your debt,” Dave said.

T
HE CHAPEL WAS A
copy of an English country church. It stood on a rise among trees. Trees shadowed a lawn that sloped down to a curve of roadway where cars waited, limousines, taxis. The funeral service was over. The coffin had been lowered to the crematorium under the chapel. An electronic organ run by a computer played on to the empty pews, the damp-smelling flowers. And those who had come to say good-bye to Adam Streeter straggled off through the long shadows of the trees. Bronze grave markers were embedded in the grass. Now and then, someone turned an ankle on one of these, or snagged a toe or heel on one, and stumbled a little, to be caught and steadied by another mourner. Car doors slammed. Engines started.

Dave stood next to a lawyer called Albright in the porch of the chapel and watched the crowd leave.
He had friends all over the world
. Chrissie had been right about that. The skin tones had varied from intense African blue-black to the whitest Scandinavian, the body types and sizes from miniature Thais to titanic Germans. Turbans and spectacular caps had covered heads. Saris and caftans in wild colors fluttered now in the late afternoon breeze. Albright too must have been thinking about this multinational, multiracial, multireligious character of the crowd. He said:

“Why didn’t she come? Everyone else on earth did.”

“It looks that way.” Dave shrugged. “I guess she’s used to keeping out of sight. Streeter didn’t want Chrissie to know about her. Or Chrissie’s mother. Particularly.”

“I know that,” Albright said. “But it no longer obtains.” He was a trim young man in a summerweight suit and neatly clipped beard. There wasn’t any tone to his voice. He had a fine tan and he stood erect, but the voice made him sound worn out, tired to death. “And it sure as hell won’t obtain when Brenda Streeter reads the will—the ex-wife.”

“She’s getting cut out of everything these days,” Dave said. “Maybe she won’t even notice Fleur’s little legacy. I’d gauge she isn’t often sober.”

“She’s always greedy,” Albright said in his dead voice. “She’ll scratch and claw to get it all, if she can.”

Inside the chapel back of them the quavery organ went silent in the middle of a phrase. Fastenings on the carved double doors rattled. A bald man in a dark suit and modest tie swung the doors shut. Steel bars slid into place inside.

“Speak of the devil.” Albright jerked his chin. Ivy climbed the chapel walls. And past a leafy corner of the building, Brenda Streeter, in shiny tight black satin, a black pillbox hat with a veil, and keeping a firm grip on Chrissie’s arm, led the blind girl away. Chrissie was the taller. The black mohair suit her mother had put her into didn’t fit, pulled at the armpits, and Dave bet the waist of the skirt was safety-pinned. She wore dark glasses. Her face was wet from weeping. Brenda’s wasn’t. She swished Chrissie’s slim white cane like a sword to fend off enemies. Dave turned from watching them, and Albright had stepped behind a stone pillar. “Quiet,” he said. “I want her to think I’ve gone.” Both men waited until mother and daughter were out of hearing. “Witch,” Albright said. “I’m sorry for that poor kid.”