The Whole Truth (35 page)

“He's been fantastic,” Bethany said.

Steve shook his head. “She's the fantastic one. Just wait till you hear the whole thing.”

“I'm busting at the seams,” Meyer said.

The hospital was bigger than the one in Verner, as was this whole town. There was even a five-story Hyatt within shouting distance. Probably a place for the serious skiers, hunters, and fishermen to hang their collective hats on their way to various points of interest.

They patched Steve up in Emergency. He escaped infection, but not a zipper-like line of sutures. They pumped something into his veins. They fitted him for crutches and sent him out at 12:35 p.m.

Mal Meyer and Bethany were in the waiting area, talking. Or rather it was Bethany talking and Meyer jotting notes.

Meyer stood when Steve came in. “She's spinning quite a tale,” he said. “I want to question this guy Hendrickson too. I want enough to go to a grand jury.”

“How about the feds?” Steve asked.

“I can try to bring in ATF.”

“The feds are already on this. There's two agents in LA, Issler and Weingarten. You had contact?”

“No.”

“They're working this thing somehow. But before you talk to them, get to Hendrickson. But do it on the QT. Think you can?”

“QT?”

“Don't you ever watch old movies?”

“No time for that.”

“It means on the lowdown,” Steve said. “No fanfare. Not yet. Mott is involved.”

“Mott! You got proof of that?”

“Oh, I got proof. But you just ask Mr. Hendrickson to come in. Tell him not to say anything to anyone, under threat of indictment.”

“What indictment?”

“Make something up. Just bring him in.”

At which Mal Meyer smiled like a mischievous kid. “You LA guys really do march to a different beat.”

SEVENTY

They got back to the DA's office around three. Meyer took his Saturn into the private below-ground lot, the same place the sheriff's bus would drop prisoners off for court. There was a private elevator for law and court personnel. Meyer guided Steve and Bethany up to the fifth floor, which was relatively devoid of activity. Like a guy leading prison escapees, Meyer led Bethany and Steve to a small conference room halfway down a corridor.

Only a woman carrying a stack of files saw them. She nodded at Meyer like there was nothing amiss. Just another day at the office.

Meyer locked the conference room door from the inside. “You'll be able to kick back here,” he said to Steve.

Kick back?
“What are you going to do?”

“Persuade. I want to get that Hendrickson in here if I can. And I want to get a full account. Oh yeah, and those federal agents. Names again?”

“Issler and Weingarten,” Steve said. “You can just tell them a Mr. Conroy referred them.”

Meyer jotted it down on the little pad he carried. “I'll have one of the clerks look in on you. Take care of anything you need. You'll be okay?”

“Just get her a rifle,” Steve said.

Meyer looked at him, shook his head. Left.

“Now what happens?” Bethany asked.

“We are in the jaws of the system now,” Steve said. “We wait. But you can do a little more of that praying if you want.”

“What should I pray for?”

Steve thought a moment. “That Eldon LaSalle and his band of merry men get ripped off the face of the earth.”

“Even Johnny?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Even Johnny.”

“I don't know if this matters,” Bethany said. “But I don't think Johnny wanted to have you . . . you know, taken care of.”

“Why would you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don't think he and his father were getting along. Just little things I saw, that's all.”

“It's too late to make any difference. Johnny made his choice a long time ago. Now he's got to live with it. Or die with it.”

The clerk, a paralegal named Arty who looked like Adam Sandler, did as promised, and brought coffee and bottled water and a bag of Milano cookies. Bethany said she'd never had a Milano and ate almost the whole bag.

It was good to watch her do that. Like she was a little girl again, before innocence was lost to Eldon LaSalle.

At 4:35 Meyer stuck his head through the conference room door. “You all set?” he asked.

“Set for what?” Steve said.

“He's here. I'm bringing him in.”

Meyer closed the door. Five minutes later it opened again. Meyer walked in with Edward Hendrickson.

“What is this?” Hendrickson said, looking at Steve.

“You know Mr. Conroy?” Meyer asked.

The old gentlemanly face reddened. “I do not feel I need to be here.”

“Please sit down, sir,” Meyer said. “Like I said, I would much rather talk informally here than get a subpoena. But that's entirely up to you.”

“What is he here for? What am I supposed to have done?”

“I found Doc Phillips,” Steve said.

Hendrickson gasped as if he'd had a lung punctured. For a moment Steve thought it was a heart attack. Hendrickson put a hand to his chest and fell into the hard government chair that Meyer held for him.

“Can I get you some water?” Meyer asked.

Hendrickson shook his head, took a moment to steady his breathing. He kept his eyes on the table when he said, “Did Walker tell you anything?”

“He told me enough,” Steve said. “Your name came up.” He decided not to reveal exactly how Hendrickson's name had come up, as he had been the one to raise it. Nor the little detail of the doctor's blowing himself away. Maybe that news hadn't reached Hendrickson's ears yet. Steve could mention it for shock value later if he needed to.

“Where is Walker now?” Hendrickson asked.

“Tehachapi,” Steve said. “Still very much in Tehachapi. I think he's very attached to the place.”

“Is he drinking?”

“Not anymore.”

“That's good,” Hendrickson said. “Perhaps he's found a measure of redemption.”

“Why haven't you said anything about the autopsy in '83?” Steve asked. “Why have you kept it secret for so long?” This required assumptions, but he was on a roll.

“It was for old Mr. Bruck's sake,” Hendrickson said. “He saved my life. I wanted to save his.”

Meyer pulled out a chair now and sat. He removed a handheld tape recorder from his inside jacket pocket. Steve thought it might be too early for that. Might scare Hendrickson off.

“I'd like to tape your statement,” Meyer said. “I'll have it transcribed and you can correct anything you want and sign it later. Okay?”

Hendrickson hung on the question for a beat, like a man on a tightrope steadying himself. His eyes seemed to recede, drifting off to a distant memory.

Then he started to talk.

SEVENTY-ONE

“I was an alcoholic when I came to Verner. Came back from Korea and settled in San Berdoo, wife and baby waiting for me. Drank myself into a divorce. Couldn't hold a job. Bruck was my sergeant. We kept in touch, he told me to come up to see him.

“He dried me out. Got me back up on my feet, made me feel like a man again. The doctor he paid to help dry me out was Walker Phillips. Bill Bruck gave me a job. It wasn't at the mortuary — he was just starting that out. He also ran a hardware store. I worked there for about fifteen years, then went to the mortuary. About that same time two new people came to town. One was Eldon LaSalle. The other was Owen Mott.

“Mott came in from another county and was an appointed sheriff. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if there was some money that changed hands. All I know is that Mott did not seem overly concerned with Eldon LaSalle. And LaSalle gave the appearance of being someone who wanted to do good in the community. He paid for the building of the Chamber of Commerce. That was in the early days of his citizenship.

“Then came the fire. It was the fire that killed a man named Clinton Cole and a little boy. Mott led the investigation and ruled that it was an accident. I don't know why, but I never believed that. Maybe it was just the way Mott looked when he talked about it. The other man who had a strange look about it was Bill Bruck. I never questioned Bill. I never felt I had that right. I figured whatever he knew was his to know, and he had a good reason for knowing it. They did the autopsy and found that the little boy who was burned to death was a kid who had been taken from his home sometime earlier that year.”

“That was supposedly my brother,” Steve said.

“That's where I would have left it but for Walker Phillips. I was going to church regularly then and had straightened out my life to the point where people thought of me as a pillar of the community. Some sort of moral example. That's a laugh. If only they could have seen inside me.

“But one night Walker Phillips came to see me. He had been drinking heavily. That's not something he used to do. So I knew there was something wrong. He proceeded to spill his guts to me. He asked me not to say anything to anyone, but that he had to talk to somebody. You know, I think deep down maybe he wanted me to talk about it. Maybe he wanted to be caught. You think strange things when you're drunk. Believe me, I know.

“So I listened. And this is what he told me.”

Hendrickson paused. “I'll take that water now, if you don't mind.”

“Sure.” Meyer left the office for a moment, leaving Steve and Bethany alone with Hendrickson.

“You shouldn't have come here,” Hendrickson said. “It can only end badly for you now.”

Tiny mice feet clawed Steve's spine. The man no doubt spoke the truth.

Meyer came back with the water and Hendrickson drank. He cleared his throat and seemed to be gathering his strength, like a weight lifter about to do the clean and jerk.

“The boy in the fire was Eldon LaSalle's own son.”

Steve almost slipped out of his chair. He saw Meyer's eyes filling the thick lenses of his glasses. Even Bethany seemed stunned.

No one said anything for a long moment. Then Hendrickson continued. “Eldon LaSalle came to these mountains after building that place he calls Beth-El. He was able to keep tight control over the information flowing out of it. I don't think anyone even knew he had a son until years later, a son named Johnny. Only Walker knew the truth. The truth about Eldon LaSalle's son.”

Hendrickson took another sip of water in what was obviously an ordeal.

“He brought Walker up to the place in secret to examine his son. It was clear he was not the son LaSalle wanted as his heir. He was retarded. I guess that's not the term you're supposed to use now. I can't keep up. He was not perfect, let's put it that way, and that was all that mattered to LaSalle. Sometime up there Walker made his deal with the devil. I don't know all that was involved after that, how much money may have changed hands. But Walker was in deep.

“I sometimes wonder why LaSalle didn't just kill poor Walker. I know Walker has two daughters who he was estranged from. But he loved them. They came to represent the only good thing he'd ever done. Maybe LaSalle told Walker if he ever spoke about anything, he'd deal with the daughters. At the end, I don't think it would have taken much to scare Walker into doing anything.”

Suddenly Hendrickson's eyes narrowed. “If this gets out, they may try to kill Walker and those two girls. You've got to promise me you'll take care of that.”

Meyer deferred to Steve.

“Mr. Hendrickson,” Steve said, “I wasn't entirely up front with you. Yes, I talked to Dr. Phillips, but he shot himself before I left. He's dead.”

Hendrickson closed his eyes, paused, nodded. “Then there's no use holding this thing close to the vest,” he said. “Walker told me that LaSalle had found a boy to his liking, and wanted him to be his only son.”

Steve had a sudden thought about a TV mini-series he'd seen once. A Stephen King story about a demon who came to an island community in the middle of a storm when no one could get out. He came to take away one of their children, to become his apprentice demon. It was chilling, and as Steve recalled the demon won because the town didn't stand up to him with collective faith.

“What happened next was horrible,” Hendrickson continued, “but Walker, for reasons known only to him, went along with it. I do know that in the next few years Walker became quite wealthy. But his drinking got worse.

“Cole had become a problem for LaSalle. So it was arranged. Cole and the boy died in a fire that was set by someone from LaSalle's own group. Walker performed the autopsy, but there was still one other role that had to be played.”

“Mott,” Steve said.

Hendrickson nodded. “And now you know what's been hidden all these years. I'm a coward for not coming forward before.”

“That deputy,” Steve said, “Oderkirk. He was killed, wasn't he?”

“I don't know,” Hendrickson said.

“You didn't suspect?”

“I've given up suspecting.”

“I think Oderkirk started asking questions Mott didn't like.”

“That may be.” Hendrickson was a deflated balloon now. He seemed to sink inside his suit.

Meyer clicked off the tape recorder. “This is all hearsay,” he said. “I believe it, but we need to have direct evidence.”

“We can exhume the boy's body, do a DNA match,” Steve said. “He's buried in Indio. We'd still need LaSalle's DNA. He predates the databases. I don't think he has a record.”

“We've got enough for the feds to go up there with a search warrant. They're going to need a whole team for this one. I better call those two guys in LA.”

“What about Mott?” Steve said.

“We have less than nothing on Owen Mott,” Meyer said. “We're going to have to tread very lightly around that one.”

“And what about me?” Hendrickson asked.

“No one needs to know we've spoken,” Meyer said. “In the warrant affidavit you will be an anonymous citizen informant. That's enough to get us through their gates.”