The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (19 page)

"Rey Platte. Can you remember when he was here?"

Nelson studied a calendar. "I'm quite sure it was the weekend of the seventh and eighth. A colleague and I take turns manning the office on weekends. But I'm not sure whether it was Saturday or Sunday. He had photos for me to look at also. Some of them were on a wanted poster."

I showed him my copy of the wanted notice on the suspected bank robbers. "Like this?"

"Exactly. Then he had photos of another man. They showed both the man's profile and his face straight on, as if he'd been arrested sometime."

"That probably was the brother of one of these men on the poster."

"Yes, that one."

He indicated Paul Chase. Which meant that Dempsey had also carried photos of Wesley Chase, like the ones I'd been promised from Rey Platte. "Did any of them look at all like the man who paid for the girl's operation?"

Nelson slumped back in his chair. "I honestly couldn't say. The fellow had a beard, long hair, dark glasses. He just slouched around the waiting room. And he didn't pay what I ordinarily charge for such things, either. But a hundred dollars is better than nothing."

"How about this man, have you seen him?" I gave him a photo of Jerry Lind.

"Yes, I repeated my little yarn to this young fellow shortly after I saw the police officer. He didn't have any photos to show me. Actually, he seemed rather distracted by it all. More as if he were going through the motions than anything else."

"Could you be more exact about when you saw him?"

"Oh, boy. Well now, wait a minute, yes I can." He paged through an appointment book. "He made me late for a conference
across the street. He was a well-mannered young man and I didn't want to be too brusque with him. It was the day we all met to decide what to do about Mr. Dustin. Yes, here it is. Monday June nine. Three p.m. So the young fellow must have arrived at around two thirty in the afternoon."

I felt a little glow inside. It meant that Jerry Lind had been there a few hours after his uncle's death. Even if something had happened to him since, Marcie would get some of the rich pie.

"There's an estate matter involved in this as well, Doctor. If it comes to it, would you be willing to sign a statement to the effect you'd seen this man on that day, at that time in the afternoon?"

"Absolutely. If his name is..." He rummaged around in a desk drawer until he came up with a card. "Jerry Lind, and he works for Coast West Insurance Company."

I glanced at the card. It was one of Jerry's. "That's it. But you can't tell exactly when the detective was here."

"Not really. But it doesn't seem as if it had been just the day before this Lind came by. Probably it was two days. That would make it Saturday, the seventh."

It was the night of the seventh that Dempsey had made his last known phone calls from Barracks Cove. It seemed as if I finally was pointed down the right street. Dempsey would have been able to recognize the man who served time for helping his brother, the bank robber. Even if Wesley Chase had grown long hair and a beard, Dempsey would have known what to look for. One or both of the Chase brothers had probably settled in Barracks Cove, and Dempsey had found them.

"You've been a big help, Doctor."

"Well frankly I'm more concerned about the missing men than I am the fellow who gave me that hundred dollar bill. I guess that's why I blew up when I heard you were here. I thought you had come to ask the same tired questions as the man earlier. I tell you, it's enough to send a person straight back to Chicago."

"What man earlier?"

"Oh, I guess you don't know about him." Nelson groped into his shirt pocket and brought out another card. "I see he works for the same insurance company. Stoval was his name. He was in here today a little before noon asking about the man who paid for the abortion."

I went across the street to the hospital to look in on Tuffy, but I'd missed him. It turned out that with a cast on his ankle and an elastic bandage on his knee, plus a small pair of crutches, he was mobile again and had left the hospital to stay in a nearby motel with his mother, who had arrived that morning. His father was expected to be bedridden another couple of days. I stopped in to say hello. He was a man in his early thirties with a medium build. He seemed to be recovering nicely. We chatted a few minutes. I asked about the phone conversation he'd had with his brother on the night of his birthday, but he wasn't able to tell me anything I didn't already know.

I finished my business with the local police and headed west, but planned to make another stop on my way back to Barracks Cove. I wanted to go back in to where I'd left my pack the day before. The small, nicely balanced axe alone was worth the trip, I figured, aching body and all. I drove to where Tuffy and I had come out the day before. I at least knew the country I'd been through, and without having to carry the boy I figured I could get up to the clearing and back inside a couple of hours or less.

I parked alongside the road, changed into the outdoor clothes that still were a little damp from the day before and started out. I hiked in and crossed the Stannis again where the sandbar split the river into a pair of channels. I had a brief, tough climb back up and around the granite outcropping that formed one side of the falls and finally reached the spot where I originally had intended to cross the river with Tuffy. My rope was still securely tied around the tree at the river's edge. It trailed on down out of sight through the falls below. I pulled it in, shook it off and coiled it, then tried to make out what had happened the day before
when I put the strain on it. There were a few uneven strands at one outer segment of it. The rest of the stub was evenly cut off, as if my axe had chafed it one time, cutting through a portion of it. Which puzzled me, since I normally am careful to keep the axe sheathed while lugging it on the trail, just to keep from severing my own spinal column. On the other hand, maybe it was cheap rope. I couldn't recall where I'd bought it.

I got back onto the game trail above and climbed on up the ridge, through wooded pockets, the long meadow and the slopes above. My legs still ached from the day before, but I didn't rest along the way and arrived back at the northern stream and little clearing where I'd found Tuffy in just under an hour. I splashed on over, retrieved the pack, took a drink of water and started back down. My mind was ranging over the events surrounding the missing Jerry Lind and the time went quickly. I made better time than I had on my way up. I intended to circle around the granite shoulder at the falls in order to cross the river at the shallower, broad stretch along the sandbar. But part way down the sharp, inner slope, something peculiar occurred to me. It had to do with the area up above where I'd strung the rope. I wasn't positive, but it nagged me enough so I reversed myself and climbed back up to the granite outcropping. I was right about there being something wrong. The shorter length of rope that should have been tied to the tree across the river was missing. Things had happened in a pell mell, tumbling rush on the day before, but I was certain the rope had parted, and not become untied. I wasn't happy about having to waste any more time, but the missing rope bothered me. I took a deep breath against the chilling shock and plunged back into the river, making my way slowly and most carefully to the far side. Once there, I looked carefully around. The rope wasn't on the tree or anywhere else nearby.

I shifted the pack on my back and started through the underbrush near the river bank. A couple of dozen paces farther along I found something I would have seen the day before if I'd scouted
around some before going back up to fetch Tuffy. It was one of the old logging roads lacing the area that Fairbanks had been reminded of. It was partially overgrown and rutted, but it still made a handy slash through the surrounding country. It curved in from the direction of today's highway then roughly followed the river's course uphill. I went up it a ways out of curiosity. Then I caught a whiff of something unpleasant. It's the sort of aroma that you never forget once you encounter it. My nerves turned a little raw and it didn't have anything to do with the cold I figured I was coming down with. I hunched my shoulders and picked up the pace. The road made a little bend. Thirty yards beyond, it turned away from the river, and that's where I spotted the dark hulk. It rested in the trees between the road and the river. It was a car, or the remains of one. The partially burned metal body of a Ford Mustang.

I paused to catch my breath. If I still smoked cigarettes I would have had one. But I didn't. So there was nothing to do but finish it. I moved a little closer and stopped again, but this time it was just part of the job. I examined the surrounding ground, then circled the auto body, seeing nothing of value. The license plates had been removed. I finally stepped up to the car and peered inside. There was a man's body in the front seat. I felt just one small consolation. I still had a job. It wasn't the body of Jerry Lind. It was Dempsey, the missing detective. Somebody had held a gun close to his face and pulled the trigger. The exit wound had made a mess. The body hadn't been affected by the fire, so far as I could tell. It looked as if somebody had set fire to the rear of the vehicle. The gas tank had exploded and the area around it was chewed and scorched, but the flames had gone out before gutting the vehicle and Dempsey's body. Somebody had been in a hurry. It was sloppy work.

I put aside my everyday feelings as a human being and went through the dead man's pockets. His wallet had been removed, but he still wore a four-inch Colt revolver, snug in its holster.
Somebody had gotten to him without his even suspecting that things were amiss. It was a lesson to us all. I opened the glove compartment. It had been cleaned out. The trunk would probably be the same. But it didn't matter. The people would know where to look, the ones who would have to come in after the body. They'd find identification numbers and eventually establish ownership of the auto. I was confident it would turn out to belong to Jerry Lind. It only puzzled me why it hadn't been his body inside.

FIFTEEN

B
ack in Barracks Cove, I began to parcel out the bad news. Chief William Morgan was upset that an out-of-town police officer had been working in his area without making a courtesy call, the same as it had bothered Simms in Willits. But Morgan did like the fact that the body had been found out of town, so that it would be up to the county sheriff's office and coroner's people to go in and recover car and body. I showed him on his map where to find them, and he gave me the binoculars Hawkes had borrowed.

I went on down the hall to the phone booth and made some credit card calls. I phoned Rey Platte and passed on the unhappy news to Chief Porter. I felt it would be best for him to tell Dempsey's wife. He promised to do it. He said also he had the photo of Wesley Chase that I'd asked for. I asked him to express it up to the Barracks Cove police.

Then I phoned San Francisco and spoke with Janet Lind at the television station. I could almost feel her face fall when I said that I'd established that her brother was still alive after her uncle had died. She told me to keep up the good work. She was busy getting ready for the six o'clock news show and didn't have any more time to talk. I was glad for that. I didn't want to tell her just yet about Jerry's car and the body inside it.

And then I phoned Allison France. There wasn't much else I could do until the photo of Wesley Chase arrived, and I was ready for some relaxation. Allison was working in her studio. I
apologized for having to cancel our dinner date the night before when I'd flown down to Rey Platte.

"I'll make it up to you tonight," I told her.

"I should hope so."

"Pick you up at seven?"

"That'll be fine, Pete."

I hung up almost smiling. I was glad she didn't live in San Francisco. I'd find it hard to get any work done.

I went on down to the glass doors leading to the parking lot, then stopped. Somebody was going through my car. I had left it unlocked because I hadn't planned to be away long and it was, after all, just outside City Hall and Police Headquarters, and on top of all that you weren't supposed to have to worry so much about being ripped off in small towns the way you were in big cities. I couldn't get a good enough view to tell who the individual was, but I could guess. He probably spotted me driving in there. He wore a suit and a hat and dark glasses. He was leaning into the car on the passenger side going through things in the glove compartment.

I slipped outside and circled around a couple rows of cars so that I could come up on the prowling figure from behind. I quietly placed the binoculars on the blacktop. The figure in my car was working quickly. He slapped shut the door to the glove compartment, backed out and closed the car door as he turned. It was Stoval, from Coast West Insurance.

"Hello, Emil," I greeted him. Then I poked my fist into his mouth. I didn't hold back anything. I did it like they used to tell me when I fooled around gyms in my youth. I threw the punch as if I were aiming for a point about an inch in back of his head.