Man on a Leash (9 page)

He’s not after me, Romstead thought, unless he’s gone completely berserk and stopped thinking altogether, but I’d better find out for sure before he gets right on top of me with that gun. Better to have him open up at fifty yards so I can haul ass than to let him stumble over me. He stood up as though he’d just climbed out of the ravine and started to walk toward the other. Bonner saw him but made no move toward the gun in his pocket; he merely quickened his pace. He began to run up the slope toward the bench where Romstead was. When he reached the top he slowed to a furious walk beside the ravine and shouted.

“Romstead! What the hell are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are,” Romstead called back.

They were less than twenty yards apart when it happened. Romstead heard the
whuck
of the bullet’s slapping into flesh and bone a fraction of a second before he heard the crack of the rifle up on the ridge to his right. Bonner’s body jerked with the impact, he spun around, thrown off-balance, and started to fall. There was another
whuck,
and his body jerked again even as it was going down. Romstead was already diving for the ravine. He landed on the sloping side of it and rolled and skidded to the bottom, and as he was spitting out dirt and trying to get the dust and sweat out of his eyes, he heard the rifle fire again.

The ravine was a good seven feet deep, so he was safe here as long as the rifleman stayed where he was, but he had to try to get Bonner down from there if he could locate him. He ran bent over, hugging the wall, and tried to remember just where the big man had fallen. Then he saw the dark coat-sleeved arm. The ravine wall was steeper here. He grasped the hand to pull, and at the same time there was another
whuck
above him, followed by the crack of the rifle. He hauled. Bonner’s head and shoulders dangled over the lip of the ravine, and a stream of foamy, bright arterial blood gushed downward through the dust from the throat that was almost completely shot away.

Romstead gagged and retched and pushed himself to one side to get out of the way of it, and then the sickness was gone, and he was conscious only of a cold, consuming rage. He clawed his way up the wall, grasped a protruding root to hold himself there behind the body while he groped in the right-hand pocket of the jacket. He had the automatic then, but it was slick with blood from one of the other wounds, and as he slid back to the bottom of the ravine and started to pull back the slide to arm it, it slipped from his hands. He scooped it up, now pasty with dust, operated the slide, numbly watched the cartridge fly out of the already-loaded chamber, and pounded back up the ravine.

Twenty yards away he threw himself against the sloping wall and inched upward until he could see past a clump of sage at the top. The crest of the ridge ahead of him was at least two hundred and fifty yards away. The handgun, of course, was as useless at that distance as a slingshot, but if the son of a bitch came down to appraise his work and finish off the hiding and unarmed witness, he was going to get the greatest, and last, surprise of his life.

He waited. Minutes crept by. There was no movement anywhere along the ridge. He wiped sweat from his face and left it smeared with blood and dust from his hand. Raising the binoculars, he carefully swept the full crest of the ridge for several hundred yards in both directions and saw nothing but sage and sun-blasted rock. Then he heard a car start up, or a truck, somewhere beyond it. It began to draw away and faded into silence. He turned so he could look out over the flat beyond the ranch house, and in a few minutes he saw the lengthening plume of dust rising from the road as the unseen vehicle sped along it, headed south.

It might be a decoy, he knew; there could have been two of them, one remaining to cut him down when he ventured out into the open, but he didn’t think so. A feeling was growing in him now, a totally inexplicable conviction that the rifleman had been up there the whole time he was walking around this hillside and that the man could have killed him fifty times over. Then why Bonner?

In a few minutes he eased back down the ravine to where it shallowed and finally debouched upon the flat. On shaky knees and with his back muscles. drawn up into knots, he stepped out into the open and started toward the house. After a hundred yards he began to breathe easily again.

When he got out to the gate, the fence was gone on one side of it. Bonner had apparently just chopped his way through the wire without even looking at the chain. The dust of the other vehicle’s passage had long since settled, and there were no others in sight. The wheels spun as he straightened out and gunned it, headed for town.

“If you two goddamned bullheaded—” Brubaker searched for a word, gave up in bitter futility, and took a cigar from his desk. He began to strip off the cellophane. “He’d be alive now, but no, he had to go charging out there like a gut-shot rhinoceros instead of telling us about it, whatever it was. And if you can give me one single damned reason on God’s green earth why
you
shouldn’t be dead too, I’ll kiss your ass at half time in the Rose Bowl. Any one of those four slugs he put in Bonner would have killed him, and he could just as easily put the second one in you instead of wasting it on a man who was already as good as dead while he was still falling. Or maybe you’re so small he wasn’t sure he could hit you at two hundred and fifty yards with probably a twelve power scope, a bench rest, and hand-loaded ammunition that would put all five shots in your eye at that range—”

“I don’t know what he was shooting,” Romstead said wearily. “All I know is it was plenty hot, and he was an artist with it. And I’ve already told you, anyway, he could have shot me any time in that half hour I was wandering around there. He must have been up there all the time, and he knew I’d found their garbage dump and those cigar tubes—” He gestured toward the confused litter on Brubaker’s desk, the still bloody and dust-smeared automatic, his own statement, now typed out and signed, and half a dozen of the scorched aluminum tubes, a handwritten letter and some more papers, and a flat plastic bag of heroin. “I don’t know why he didn’t, except it was Bonner he wanted.”

It was after 4 P.M. Romstead had returned with them to what he had learned by now was called the old Van Sickle place. Brubaker and another deputy had searched the ridge and the area behind it, found a few footprints and the tracks of a pickup truck or jeep, but no brass. The rifleman had taken his four cartridge cases with him, probably, as Brubaker had said, because they were hand loads instead of factory ammunition, possibly some necked-down and resized wildcat too distinctive to leave lying around. The ambulance had driven out across the flat in back of the house, and they’d carried Bonner’s exsanguinated body down from the hillside on a stretcher, looking pitifully shrunken and crumpled in on itself. Romstead had shown them the garbage dump, and after they’d come back to the office, he’d made a full statement and signed it. His face felt sunburned over the old tan and still had dust caked on it. His sweaty clothes had dried now in the air conditioning and stuck to him when he moved.

“Personally,” Brubaker said, “I think they set him up with a sucker phone call sometime this morning, because he took off right from his sister’s funeral without even going home to change clothes. But now we’ll never know. Any more than we’ll ever know what he found out in San Francisco or what they were afraid he’d found out. That’s the beauty of amateurs showing the police how to do it. By God, they don’t waste half their time sitting around on their dead asses making out reports like a bunch of dumb cops or even bothering to tell anybody what they’re doing.” Brubaker removed the cigar from his mouth as if to throw it against the wall but merely cursed again and reclamped it between his teeth.

“Well, he did give you the letter,” Romstead said. “When did it come, and specifically what did it say?”

“It came yesterday morning,” Brubaker said. “But you might as well read it, since it concerns your old man.” He grabbed it out of the confusion on his desk and passed it over.

It was written with a ball-point pen on a single sheet of cheap typing paper. Romstead read it.

Romstead sighed and dropped it back on the desk. “So he could, and he did.”

Brubaker nodded bleakly. “I’d say so.”

“What did the lab report say? Was the stuff cut?”

“Yes. But she still died of an overdose. She probably didn’t shoot it herself, though.”

“No,” Romstead said. “Of course not. If the stuff was in the car, probably behind the seat cushions somewhere, the dresser was a phony. And in that case, so was the whole thing. They were waiting for her out there—or
he
was, whoever the hell he is— knowing an addict would eventually show up where the junk was. Did you get the phone number?”

“We occasionally think of things like that,” Brubaker said wearily. He picked up another sheet of paper. “She came home on Tuesday of last week, apparently with enough of the stuff to keep her going for a few days, but by Monday she was climbing into the light fixtures. Monday evening, after Bonner’d gone to work, there were five toll calls to this number in San Francisco at twenty to thirty-minute intervals. Maybe sometimes the man would answer and she’d just hang up, or Debra would answer but he was still home, so she’d say wrong number. This, so help me God, to the home phone of a man who’s apparently trying to find her so he can kill her. Junk.” He shook his head and went on. “Anyway, she and Debra must have made connections on the fifth call, and Debra told her about the deck she’d hidden in your father’s car and maybe promised to send her enough for a fix if she could.

“I guess Jeri didn’t think that night she knew how to break into a house, but another thirty hours of withdrawal symptoms and she didn’t have any doubt of it at all. She could break into Fort Knox with a banana. So she went out there sometime after two o’clock Wednesday morning, as soon as Bonner was asleep. And in the meantime, apparently Debra’d been worked over till she broke down and told the man about it, so he was waiting. Obviously he didn’t guess about the letter, though.

“The San Francisco police got the name and address from the phone company. J. L. Stacey, probably an alias, in a furnished apartment out near North Beach, but when they got there, the birds were gone without a trace. Bonner, of course, couldn’t have got the information, so I guess he was just going it blind, trying to run down somebody who knew who Debra was.

“And, incidentally, while we’re on the subject of phone calls, both of those your father made”— Brubaker picked up another sheet of paper from the litter on his desk—” to Winegaard at seven A.M. July sixth and to Richter at ten fifteen A.M. July tenth, were from his home phone. So whatever he was doing out there at the Van Sickle place, he came home on Monday to phone and then left again, for God knows where until he showed up at the bank on the morning of the twelfth.”

“He didn’t go anywhere, from beginning to end,” Romstead said. “He was taken. He was kidnapped.”

Brubaker got up and began to pace the office. “Jesus Christ, when I think that I could’ve been a pimp or a geek in a sideshow, biting the heads off chickens! Look, Romstead, kidnap is a federal offense, and if we had one single damned shred of evidence to hang a kidnap case on, we could call in the FBI. We’d have a whole army of special agents working on it. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to them, but after they talked to Richter, they said forget it. They must have thought I was nuts. And Richter, believe me, is getting plenty pissed about it. He says he’s going to make a recording. First there was Sam Bolling, and then the San Francisco police, and then you, and then the FBI, and then me.

“So maybe I was wrong about the heroin theory, so I don’t have the faintest damned idea what he was doing out there at the old Van Sickle place or what he did with that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, there is no evidence whatever he was there, or anywhere else, against his will, and how in hell” —Brubaker dropped into his chair again and slammed a hand down on his desk among the papers— “how in hell—you tell me—could he have been kidnapped if he came into that bank himself—alone—to get the money?”

“I don’t know,” Romstead replied. “But I’m going to find out.” He got up.

“Well, there’s no way I can stop you from trying. But did you ever hear the old story about the man tracking the tiger through the jungle?”

Romstead nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, if I were you I’d keep a good lookout behind. That second set of tiger tracks may be closer than you think.”

He went back to the motel and called Mayo. She grabbed up the phone on the first ring, and he gave a sigh of relief as he heard her voice.

“I’ve been worried all day,” she said.

“Not too worried to go out with another man. I tried to call you around eleven.”

“Oh, hell, of all the rotten luck. That’s when I ducked downstairs to get the mail. And I wasn’t gone five minutes. Did you find the place?”

“Yes. But there’s nobody there now and nothing to prove who they were.” He had no intention of saying anything about Bonner. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there. I’m not sure yet what flight I’ll be on, so don’t figure on meeting me at the airport. Just stay near the phone, and I’ll call as soon as I’m in town. Should be before ten.”

“Are you leaving for Reno now?”

“Very shortly. Just as soon as I talk to Mrs. Carmody.”

“Hah! Maybe
she’s
the reason I couldn’t come with you.”

“You’re obsessed with sex. You ought to see somebody about it.”

“Maybe I would, if you ever got home. But while you’re visiting your father’s sexpot, keep reminding yourself of the Oedipal overtones.”

“Hell, just thinking of the comparisons would do it.”

“That’ll be the day.”

After he’d hung up, he debated whether to put through a call to Murdock. No, that could wait till he’d talked to Paulette Carmody; he’d call after he was back in San Francisco. He showered and put on a fresh shirt and a tie and the suit he’d worn coming up. As he was putting the dusty and sweat-stained shirt in the bag, he remembered the fragment of brown plastic or cardboard he’d found out in the flat -by the dead burro. He removed it from the pocket.

What could
fd
mean?
Mfd
for manufactured? No, there’d have to be something after it.
Mfd by,
or
Mfd in—
He frowned. Solder. Radio officer.
Check out the simalizer and put a new frammistat in his KLH.
Jeri Bonner had worked for an electronics supply company, probably where she’d met Tallant. He grabbed up the telephone directory and flipped through the thin section of yellow pages. RADIO AND TV, REPAIRS. There were three, one of them on West Third Street. Well, they couldn’t lock you up for asking stupid questions. He dropped it in the pocket of his jacket and finished packing.

He carried the bag out to the car and stopped at the office to pay for the toll calls and the extra day. The sour-faced man was behind the desk.

“Have to pay for an extra day,” he said. “Checkout time’s two P.M. Same’s it has been for years.”

“Right.” Romstead put down the Amex card.

“You’d think someday people’d learn—”

Romstead picked up the card and put down two twenty-dollar bills. It’d be quicker, and he wouldn’t have to listen to the old fart.

“Posted right there on the wall, plain as anything.”

Romstead picked up the change, his face suffused with wonder. “Well, I be dawg; so that’s what that writin’ said? I thought it meant I could take the towels for keepsakes.”

He went up Aspen and made the turn into Third. The TV repair shop was near the end of the block with a parking space a few doors away. It was after five now, and he hoped it wasn’t closed. It wasn’t, quite. At the counter in front a girl was putting on lipstick and appraising her hair in a small mirror. In back of her was an open doorway into the shop.

“Are any of your service men still here?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “Raymond’s back there. We’re about to close, though.”

“This’ll only take a minute.” He went around the end of the counter. There were two service benches in the back room with long fluorescent lights above them, littered with tools and parts and the denuded carcasses of TV sets and radios. Raymond was a pleasant long-haired youth wearing a University of Nevada T-shirt. He glanced up inquiringly from the writhing green snakes he was watching on the screen of some kind of test equipment.

“I just wanted to ask you what may be a very dumb question.” Romstead set the fragment of plastic on the bench. “Is this part of anything electronic?”

Raymond glanced at it, turned it slightly to look at the markings. “Sure,” he said. He reached into a bin and brought out a cylindrical object that reminded Romstead vaguely of a shotgun shell except that it had a short piece of wire attached to each end. He set it on the bench. It was imprinted with the manufacturer’s name, but what instantly caught Romstead’s eye was the legend, “100 Mfd,” in the center of it. There was a minus sign at one end and a plus at the other.

“Electrolytic capacitor,” Raymond said. “‘Mfd’ is the abbreviation for microfarad. They’re used in a number of different circuits for high capacity at a low-voltage rating. Have to be installed with the right polarity, though; that’s the reason for the plus and minus on the case.”

Romstead understood little or nothing of this except that his stab in the dark had paid off. He smiled at Raymond and put five dollars on the bench. “Thanks a million,” he said. “I won the bet.”

He drove on out West Third Street in the sunset, wondering if he hadn’t merely made the whole thing worse; certainly you could go crazy trying to figure out what all these different parts had to do with each other or with his father’s inexplicable trip to the bank. Lost in thought, he almost went past Paulette Carmody’s drive and had to slam on his brakes to make the turn. He parked in front of the walk on the circular blacktop drive and went up to ring the bell, thinking now that it was too late, that he should have called first. She’d probably heard about Bonner by now and might not feel like talking to anybody. She came to the door herself, and he suspected she’d been crying, though she’d done a good job of covering the effects with makeup. He started to apologize, but she interrupted.