The Diehard (17 page)

Mulheisen took the keys and went out. Oswald closed the door, shaking his head. A wisp of snow had blown in while the door was open. Snow had melted from Mulheisen's boots onto the carpet
by the door. Oswald thought about cleaning it up, thinking of his wife upstairs in bed. She would be annoyed by the mess. “Ah, to hell with it,” he said, and turned out the lights.

Twenty-five

“What the hell?” said Sergeant Dill, the desk man at the Ninth Precinct. “Mul, I didn't recognize you. How the hell did you get here?” The sergeant peered out the back door at the Powerwagon. “Jesus, it looks like a weapons carrier.”

“Where's Jensen?” Mulheisen asked.

“He got restless. He went to Clippert's house. He got a city plow to take him. Hey, are those uniform pants?” He gestured at Mulheisen's heavy blue pants.

“Yeah, I'm back in the blue,” Mulheisen said. He went to his tiny office and dialed Clippert's home.

“Hello,” a voice said. “Who is this?”

“Jensen, it's me.”

“Oh. Mulheisen.”

“I'm down at the precinct. Is Clippert there?”

“No. His car is, though.”

“Both cars? His wife had an Audi, I think.”

“Both cars. But I'll tell you one thing—”

Jensen volunteering information? This is new, Mulheisen thought.

“—this house is a mess.”

Silence. “What do you mean, a mess?”

“There's mattresses ripped open, kitchen shelves emptied, closets dumped out, and he never picked up that Christmas tree that he blasted. Looks like he cleared out.”

Mulheisen thought about that for a moment. “Anything else, Jensen? Did you notice anything else?”

“Not really. You want me to stay here?”

“No. Have you been to Kusane's?”

“Should I go to Kusane's? I still got the plow waiting.”

“Go see Carmine,” Mulheisen said. “Call me from there.”

Mulheisen went out to the desk. “Any messages for me, Dill?”

“You're practically our only customer tonight, Mul. I was just gonna call you when you came in. A Lieutenant Mendoza from Miami called. He left a message.”

Miami police had Miami International locked up tight, with the aid of the FBI, and they were canvassing the hotels, armed with a photograph and a description of Wienoshek. Apparently they had found where Wienoshek was staying, under the name of George Gordon, but he had checked out earlier in the evening.

McClain had called to say that arrest warrants were waiting downtown on both Wienoshek and Clippert, but that it would be impossible to have them delivered to the Ninth Precinct. Any other assistance Mulheisen required would be forthcoming by calling the shift commander at Homicide. Or call me, McClain's note said. Mulheisen read that to mean, call Homicide first.

Mulheisen told the desk man to get Miami police and put the call on his office line.

Lieutenant Mendoza came on the line. “Did you get our message?” he asked, after the introductions. “Looks like your boy has skipped. We've got checks on the bus stations, train station, and so forth.”

“How about roadblocks?”

“Of course,” Mendoza said. “But if you think he'll try to get back north, I imagine he'll want to fly, don't you?”

“Most likely,” Mulheisen agreed.

“We've got Miami International covered,” Mendoza said. “Of course, starting around six there'll be a hell of a lot more people in the terminal and then it'll be tougher to spot him. But the FBI is helping out, so we shouldn't have too much trouble.”

“What kind of an operation do you have?” Mulheisen asked.

“At the airport? We've got men all over the place, watching from observation points, outside, inside, in the johns . . . the FBI has men behind the counters of the major airlines.”

“Just at the one airport? Are there other airports?”

“Miami International is the only one with the big scheduled airlines. It's where he'd have to go if he wanted a flight north.”

“Look,” Mulheisen said, “check with Miami Flight Service. It's probably right there at the terminal. They'll have clearances on all air traffic in the area. See if there has been any kind of flight plan filed for private aircraft into the upper Midwest, especially to Michigan. And if they don't have anything, ask them to call you if they get anything.”

Twenty minutes later Jensen called again. “I'm at Kusane's. They never heard of Clippert, of course, never saw anybody of that description. But I'll tell you one thing, there's been cars in and out of their parking lot tonight.”

“Did you ask Carmine about Wienoshek?”

“My old buddy Carmine is kind of irritated with me,” Jensen said, “for waking him up on Christmas morning.”

“Did you lay it on him heavy?”

“Like a goddamn hammer,” Jensen said. “Nothing.”

“See if you can find out what kind of car he's got that could get around in this weather, then come on back.”

As soon as Mulheisen hung up, the phone rang. It was Mendoza.

“Not much traffic on Christmas Eve,” Mendoza said. “I checked as far back as 10
P.M.
That good enough?”

“Fine,” Mulheisen said. “What have you got?”

“Let's see here.” Mulheisen could hear paper rattling, then Mendoza said, “They got a Twin Beech out of Miami International at ten-eighteen Eastern, for Atlanta—”

“No,” Mulheisen interrupted, “just give me the destinations, for now. Anything into the Midwest.”

“There's not much,” Mendoza said. “The guy at Flight Service said, most of these are small aircraft that don't have the instruments to fly into bad weather areas. The farthest north we have is a flight to Chicago.”

“What's that?”

“A Convair 240 off at 0131 Eastern, for O'Hare International. A company plane, belongs to Northwest Properties. Sounds like one of those real-estate operations, where they fly prospective customers down for a day or two.”

“That doesn't sound like Wienoshek,” Mulheisen said. “What else?”

“Okay, here's one to Nashville.”

“Nashville? What's that one?” Mulheisen asked.

“That's, ah . . . oh, here's one to Pittsburgh,” Mendoza said.

“What's he sound like?”

“Lear jet, out of Miami at 0112 Eastern, for Greater Pittsburgh Airport.”

Mulheisen copied the information, then asked about the Nashville aircraft. That turned out to be an Apache that had changed its flight plan shortly after take off and headed for Memphis.

“That's about it,” Mendoza said.

“Thanks, Mendoza. Let me know if you hear anything interesting.”

Mulheisen sat and smoked a cigar. He studied the note pad scribbled up with flight plans and was reminded of his own days as a control-tower operator. Almost twenty years ago. It didn't seem that long ago. In a way, he thought he should have stayed at it. He had enjoyed tower work. All the tower operators did, although they bitched constantly about the pressure and/or the occasional moments of boredom when there was no traffic. That was the way it seemed to go: one moment you had five guys on final and the next hour you had nothing. It was different in the big commercial airports, of course, where the traffic was heavy and steady.

Mulheisen had never tired of it. Standing in the tower before a bank of radios, clearing a flight of F-101 Interceptors for a hot scramble, telling a KC-135 refueling tanker to begin his jet penetration from thirty miles out, watching a loaded C-5A use every bit of runway on takeoff. When civilian aircraft entered his control zone he would advise them of what local traffic there was.

He used to sit in the darkened tower on nights of little traffic
and listen to the big control centers passing on flight plans. Like this Apache out of Miami: someone would be calling Nashville tower to cancel that inbound; the same person would call Memphis tower with the change in flight plans.

On impulse, Mulheisen got on the telephone, and through a series of information operators was able to call the FAA Flight Service in Memphis. Memphis told him they had the Apache inbound.

“Is there any further amendment on the flight plan?” Mulheisen asked.

“No, sir. They're terminating here and requesting parking space for overnight.”

Mulheisen thanked him and hung up. It was interesting talking to Flight Service again. Just like old times. He decided to call Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Flight Service said, “A Lear? Flight out of Miami? That's Juliet Tango One-Oh-Two-Oh-Seven Sierra Tango. Amended flight plan, en route to Chicago, O'Hare. Estimated time of arrival, 0217 Central. He ought to be there by now, sir.”

Mulheisen went out into the hall and looked at the clock. Four-thirty Eastern, in Detroit, on Christmas Day. That made it three-thirty in Chicago. He called O'Hare.

O'Hare verified that they had a Lear, JT 10207 ST, out of Miami. “She was a little late,” the man said, “but she got off okay, after refueling.”

“Refueling? Where was she headed?”

“Milwaukee, with an open destination for Pellston, Michigan, if the weather cleared there.”

“How does Pellston look?” Mulheisen asked.

“Last report had a fifteen-hundred-foot overcast, but breaks in the overcast all quadrants. I see that Traverse City is almost clear with fifteen miles visibility. That's just southwest of Pellston, so they could be all right by the time they get there.”

“When will that be?” Mulheisen asked.

“About twenty minutes.”

Mulheisen immediately called the Michigan State Police. “Where the hell is Pellston?” he asked.

“About three hundred miles due north of Detroit,” said a Lieutenant Ackerman.

“I have information that an interstate fugitive, wanted here for murder, is aboard a Lear jet inbound to Pellston in about twenty minutes. Can you get a man there to make an arrest?”

“I understand that it's been storming up there,” Ackerman said, “but not as bad as here. We should be able to get a car over there, and if we can't then I don't imagine they'll be able to get out either. We'll try.”

Mulheisen gave the information to Ackerman and hung up. He stared at Jensen, who had just come in. Jensen was wearing an overcoat and galoshes, but no hat. He never wore a hat, even though his blond hair was only a half-inch long. Jensen believed that wearing a hat was an instant tipoff that one was a cop. “Anymore,” he would say, “only cops wear hats.” It didn't take a hat for anyone to know that Jensen was a cop.

“Kusane has a Lincoln Continental,” he said. “It wouldn't get through that mess. Someone was there in his parking lot in a four-wheel drive, but of course, Kusane doesn't know who it could have been. I'm gonna sack out,” he said. He looked beat.

Mulheisen nodded. He sat there, looking at his flight plans. After a while he began to look through the desk. Then he went out front. Snow was still whirling around the glass doors of the precinct. “Dill,” he said, “have you got any whiskey?”

“Whiskey? Mul, are you kidding?”

“Dill, it's Christmas.”

Dill looked around the deserted lobby. “Watch the desk, will you, Mul? I gotta go to my locker for a minute.”

He came back shortly with two plastic cups from the coffee room. They were filled with an amber fluid.

“Merry Christmas, Mul,” Dill said.

“Cheers,” Mulheisen said. He sipped. “What is this stuff, anyway?”

“Kessler's. Took it off a drunk yesterday.”

Mulheisen took the cup back to his office and sat there, sipping. He had another cup before the state police called back, forty minutes later.

“We got your man,” Lieutenant Ackerman said gleefully.

Mulheisen let out a great sigh. So that's it, he thought. It was curiously anticlimactic. He had Wienoshek. That left only Clippert, and Clippert was out in the cold.

“That's great,” Mulheisen said. “Good work. Did you get both of them?”

“No, only the one,” Ackerman said.

“Only one? Which one?”

“He says his name is Oliver Lewis. We're checking on him now.”

“What's the description?” Mulheisen demanded.

“Um, according to the officer there, he's five-ten, a hundred sixty pounds, Negro male—”

“What? I didn't give you anything on a Negro!”

“You said one of the guys might be short and dark,” Ackerman said.

“I meant he might be an Italian. Besides, where's the other guy, the main one? Wienoshek?”

“I don't know anything about Wienoshek,” Ackerman said. “All we've got is this Oliver Lewis. The pilot.”

“The pilot! I'm not interested in the pilot! Oh, well, you might as well hold him, if you can. But find out about his passengers. Why was he late, anyway? He should have been into Pellston a half-hour ago.”

Lieutenant Ackerman sighed. “I'll find out,” he said. He called back ten minutes later. “Well, here it is. They stopped in Traverse City, according to the pilot, because the weather hadn't cleared yet in Pellston. But then it cleared up right away and he came on. He had two passengers who got off in Traverse City.”

“Good Lord!” Mulheisen groaned. “Who were the passengers? Find out about the passengers. Get a description, and find out who employed this pilot.”

Ten minutes later, the answer came back. The pilot was very cooperative. He said the passengers were named Mr. Gordon and Mr. Arthur. Mr. Gordon was tall and had a pitted face. Mr. Arthur was short and dark. The airplane belonged to a private corporation in New Jersey, the Seaboard Corporation, but was usually kept in Miami. Late Christmas Eve, the pilot was informed by his employers that the plane had been chartered by a Mr. Arthur, who would
be leaving shortly with another gentleman. He was to take Mr. Arthur and Mr. Gordon wherever they wished to go, so long as it wasn't outside the country. Beyond that, Oliver Lewis was saying nothing until he had a lawyer.

Twenty-six

They were setting up a meeting. Mulheisen was sure of it, and he could guess what the meeting was about. The question was, how could Clippert get to the meeting? It didn't seem probable that he could, but Mulheisen knew that if he could get into town, other people could. It just wouldn't be easy, that's all.

Mulheisen went outside. The snow had stopped completely and the wind was dying. What the forecasters had hoped for had happened. The ridge of high pressure over eastern Canada and the Midwest had shifted, permitting the storm to continue its normal eastward course. Now a high-pressure system of cold, arctic air was moving in. Christmas Day would dawn brilliantly clear and the temperature would be well below zero. A great day for the kids to go down to the canals that lined the Detroit River and try out their new hockey skates.

Mulheisen called Mendoza in Miami and told him to cancel the search on Wienoshek. Then he went out and started the Power-wagon, thinking that he would go downtown to pick up the warrants on Wienoshek and Clippert.

The city snow crews were attacking the snow-filled streets with some success now, but there was still no traffic. Mulheisen was grateful for the high clearance of the Powerwagon.

He swung down Gratiot Avenue just before dawn. The snow was generally a foot deep on the street, with many drifts that were much deeper. There was a chewed-up lane that the plows had opened for emergency vehicles.

Just beyond Trinity Lutheran Church, where the funeral services for Jane Clippert had been held, Mulheisen glanced to his left and noticed the high-rise apartment buildings of the Lafayette Plaisance. Conspicuous among the buildings was the Seaforth Tower. A number of the apartment lights were on. Mulheisen thought that this probably indicated apartments where children had arisen to see what Santa had brought.

“Shirley Carpenter.” He said the name aloud. Clippert might have gone there. He could even have walked there from Indian Village. It was just a hike down Lafayette Avenue. Not much farther than Mulheisen's walk to Oswald's Marina.

He pushed the big Powerwagon through bumper-deep drifts and pulled up in front of Seaforth Tower. A security guard looked at his badge and let him into the lobby. Mulheisen took the elevator to the twelfth floor. Outside Shirley Carpenter's apartment door, he opened his parka and put his right hand on his .38 Chief's Special. Then he knocked with his left hand and stepped to one side of the door, out of any possible line of fire from within.

The door was immediately opened and a small blond boy of ten or so stood there in pajamas. He looked at Mulheisen. Then he leaned out in the hallway and looked both ways.

“I thought maybe it was Uncle Arthur,” the boy said.

“He's not here?” Mulheisen asked.

“No. He left.”

“Are you Scott?” Mulheisen asked.

The boy nodded. He had a very round head, rather like his mother's. Mulheisen looked beyond the boy into the room. The floor was littered with torn wrappings from Christmas presents. There was a new bicycle, a very fancy racing model. A gift from rich “Uncle” Arthur? There were also a hockey stick, a Detroit Lions football helmet, phonograph albums, books, clothes and candy. The draperies had been drawn back on the big windows and dawn showed the white shroud that lay on a peaceful Detroit and Canada, with the black swath of the river running across it.

Shirley Carpenter came into the room. She wore a short robe that showed her nice legs. She had her hair in curlers with little pieces of tissue tucked into it and covered with a net.

“What do you want?” she asked, standing behind her son.

“Clippert,” Mulheisen said.

“He's not here,” she said.

“I'd like to see for myself,” he said.

“Do you have a warrant?”

Mulheisen bared his teeth in a weary smile. “Do you really want me to get a warrant?”

She stood aside and let him enter. He drew the pistol, his eyes darting to all corners of the room. “I'd appreciate it if you and the boy would just stand quietly over there,” he said. He didn't think Clippert was there, but he didn't want to take a chance. There might be gunfire.

Mulheisen moved cautiously from room to room, checking closets, draperies, even under the beds. He had found people under beds before. But not this time. Clippert was not in the apartment. As the boy had suggested, however, Clippert had been there. There was a rich tobacco smell in the air, from a pipe.

Mulheisen jammed his pistol back into the hip-grip holster and returned to the living room.

“How long ago did he leave?” he asked.

Shirley Carpenter stood with her hands resting on Scott's shoulders. The boy looked fascinated and excited by Mulheisen and his gun, but seemed quite unafraid.

“About an hour ago,” she said. “Maybe a little less.”

“Where did he go?”

“He didn't say.”

“How did he get here?”

“He said he walked. I guess he did.”

“What did he want?”

Shirley Carpenter shrugged. “I'm not sure. He said he was thinking of going away, for a few days. He wanted to say good-by.”

“How long was he here?”

“He got here around midnight, I guess,” she said.

That meant they had been together for six hours or so, Mulheisen
figured. He wondered if they had been to bed together. He thought they probably had.

“Did he seem upset? Nervous?”

The woman looked thoughtful. “Perhaps. It's not easy to tell with a man like Arthur. He kept watching the time.”

“Did he talk about his plans? Call anyone?”

“He didn't call anyone. Somebody called here, about two hours ago. He answered the phone. It must have been a brief conversation. He just said hello, then gave this phone number and hung up. It must have been a wrong number.

“He said he had to be out of town for a few days and that the cops might come around, but that I shouldn't worry.”

“Aren't you curious what we want?” Mulheisen asked.

She shrugged.

“He didn't say where he was going? Or how he was going to get there?”

“No.”

“You think he's coming back?”

The woman suddenly looked very bleak and lonely, but she answered, “He said he would.”

Mulheisen nodded with a cynical grimace and went out of the room. Down in the lobby he questioned the guard. The guard said he knew Clippert and had seen him out the door at about five forty-five. He said he had seen Clippert set off toward Gratiot on foot.

The footprints were still visible. Mulheisen got into the Power-wagon and followed the trail up to Gratiot. There the prints ended at the plowed traffic lane. There were no further traces of a pedestrian. Obviously, somebody had picked him up.

Mulheisen stopped at a call box and called the precinct. “Dill,” he said, “do you have an up-to-date road report?”

“Roads are terrible, Mul,” Dill said.

“I know they are, I'm out on them. What about the highways?”

“The Interstates are still officially closed, say the state police, but they expect to resume their patrols shortly.”

Mulheisen closed the box. That meant that there were open lanes, he thought. He went to a phone booth and called the airports,
Amtrak and Greyhound. All runways were closed and not expected to open for normal traffic for many hours, probably late in the day at best. Amtrak said their 8:30
A.M.
train to Chicago had been canceled. They were hoping to run the 5:45
P.M.
train. Canadian National's morning train from Windsor to Toronto was delayed and probably would not run. They had high hopes for their 6:10
P.M.
train. Greyhound was not running anything. Maybe later in the day.

So where could he go? Obviously, somewhere where he wouldn't need anything more than a car, probably a four-wheel-drive type of vehicle. And Wienoshek was in Traverse City. Mulheisen called the state police and asked about highways in the Traverse City area. They put him on hold and checked with their Traverse City barracks.

“Roads are not impassable in the northern part of the state,” Lieutenant Ackerman said. “Traverse City barracks is checking for your fugitives but have nothing to report. They don't seem to be staying at the hotels or motels there, and they didn't rent a car. No reports of stolen vehicles, so far this morning. They didn't bother with roadblocks, ‘cause they figure that if your guys do have a car they can only use it on a few roads and the chances are very good that they'll be spotted, unless they drove to a nearby city and holed up, or have friends in the Traverse City area who could have picked them up. Nobody at the airport saw them leave.”

Mulheisen hung up. He sat in the truck and considered the possibilities. Kusane could have hidden Clippert away. He could hide out for a few days and meet Wienoshek later. But could Wienoshek afford to delay the meeting? He thought not. Probably they would want to meet as soon as possible, before the cops had a chance to get on their trails. But where would they meet? Anywhere, preferably up north. Perhaps in a northern city like Charlevoix, Petoskey, or even Sault Ste. Marie. The latter was comfortably close to the Canadian border, in case anyone wanted to get out of the country in a hurry.

Or they could meet at Clippert's Jasper Lake home.

For no conscious reason, Mulheisen took the Powerwagon down onto northbound Chrysler Freeway. The snow wasn't as bad as on the streets. Unimpeded winds had swept the road down to
a more or less uniform foot of snow that had been broken by the passage of plows. There were only occasional drifts, and these offered little problem for a vehicle like the Powerwagon.

In a relatively short time Mulheisen found himself out beyond Eight Mile Road and headed for Interstate 75. What the hell? he thought, and stepped down on the accelerator. He knew he should have called in, but he figured that with any luck he might be able to make it to Jasper Lake in four or five hours. He thought it was worth the try.

The snow was worse around Flint, but there was still a passable lane. A plow had been through, not really clearing snow, but breaking a trail. It was heavier going around the Saginaw/Bay City area, but now it was after eleven and more plows were running. He even saw a state police patrol, fighting along in a blue Chevrolet. He tooted his horn and went by him at 45 m.p.h.

Gas was down to half a tank already, and there were few stations open today. But he had the two five-gallon cans sitting in the back. He went on.

The sky was a deep blue and the sun hurt his eyes as it reflected off the unbroken fields of snow. Even the cab of the truck was warm. He could take off his gloves.

By now, a hundred miles north of Detroit, Mulheisen had had time to reflect on what he was doing. He told himself he was either dumber than a run-over rabbit, or he was running in on target with both afterburners cooking.

He remembered a time when he'd sat in the control tower on a slow night and played hearts with the GCA crew. They played to a hundred points, at a quarter a point. An airman first class, a weatherman assigned to the tower, was “shooting the moon,” but no hearts had fallen yet. The weatherman played into clubs and two tricks later saw his jack go down to Mulheisen's queen. A heart had fallen on the trick, blowing the weatherman's chances. “Hearts are broken, I guess,” the weatherman said glumly. One trick later, Mulheisen slipped him the queen of spades, putting the man thirteen points down in one blow. “Hearts are really broken, now,” Mulheisen told him.

Mulheisen grinned his wolfish grin and leaned forward to the
wheel as the Powerwagon roared past Midland. “Hearts are broken,” he cried out to the fields of snow.

The snow was lighter up here, he noticed. Not nearly as bad as in Detroit, and nothing like Saginaw. The Powerwagon was pushing sixty. He wheeled off the Interstate and into a small town called Clare. They had a sign on the highway that proclaimed the town “Gateway to the North.” The hotel was open and Mulheisen got a quick lunch at the dining room. A pretty little waitress told him the name of a man who would pump gas on Christmas Day. A half-hour later, feeling a little better for the food and coffee, and with a full tank of gas, Mulheisen was back on the Interstate.

It was almost two in the afternoon, a beautiful day, and he was feeling high. Exactly like a man who has been up all night, smoked too much and drank too much whiskey, he told himself.

A sign said:
JASPER LAKE
, 31
MILES.
According to the map he had gotten at Clare, Mulheisen could see that there was a small town called Jasper Lake, but it was near the Interstate. The lake itself was quite large, one of the earliest summer resorts to develop in the state, and it was ten miles east of the town that used its name.

It was twenty to three before he reached the Jasper Lake exit. Instead of stopping in the town he drove straight through it and out into the country toward the lake. It was only after he had driven some five miles along the snowy country road that circled the lake that he realized that he should have stopped to find out just where to go. There were too many little country lanes running off the county road. At last he spotted a white farmhouse, with smoke curling up from the chimney and a veritable battlement of stacked firewood encircling the house. The driveway was filled with four pickup trucks and two cars.

Mulheisen left the Powerwagon running on the road and went up to the back door, where a path had been broken through the snow.

There were at least fifteen people—men, women and children—sitting at a table laden with turkey, a ham, bowls of broccoli, yams, mashed potatoes and rich giblet gravy. There were two bowls of cranberry sauce, shimmering cylinders fresh from the can. Mulheisen felt like a visitor from another planet.

The kitchen was warm and the windows were steamed up. It
was a large room with enough space for the large table where the feasting farmers sat on every available chair in the house. The children were grouped together on a bench, except for a tiny child that a young woman carried on her lap and occasionally fed spoonfuls of mashed potatoes.

A color television in the adjacent living room had been positioned in the doorway so that the men could watch the Vikings play the Green Bay Packers, while they ate. Mulheisen was cheerfully urged to have dinner, drink a beer, watch the game. He thanked them, but declined. He asked for the whereabouts of Arthur Clippert's summer home.