Till the Butchers Cut Him Down Read online

  Impossible to say. Yet, anyway.

  * * *

  There was only one quick-service photo developer listed in the town directory, on Main Street not far from my hotel. The young woman behind the counter confirmed that someone had brought in a partially exposed roll of 35-millimeter color film containing pictures of Leon Deck’s bottle house that day, but when I asked for the customer’s name, she refused to give it. A five-dollar bill undermined her business ethics considerably; the customer, she told me, was Mrs. Walker, who owned the Native American Crafts Outlet. She’d brought the film in around eleven and had picked it up a little over an hour ago.

  Prior to eleven I’d been in the hotel, and the Land Rover had been in the custody of valet parking.

  * * *

  “Sure, I let her into your Rover,” the parking attendant said sullenly. “Mr. McNear told me to.”

  I whirled around, leaving him openmouthed in the fenced lot back of the hotel, and went inside to see his boss. At first the desk clerk told me McNear wasn’t available, but when I said—loudly—that I wanted to talk with him about the theft of personal property from my vehicle while it was in valet parking, he summoned the hotelier from his office. McNear looked nervously at two other guests who were watching with interest, and ushered me into the room behind the reception desk.

  Without offering me a chair he asked, “Now, Ms. McCone, what is this?”

  “You tell me. I’ve already spoken with your parking attendant; he says you okayed letting Brenda Walker into my Land Rover. She took a partly exposed roll of film from my camera.”

  McNear turned away, looked out the window at the parking lot. “Why would she do that?”

  “The film contained pictures of Leon Deck’s bottle house; I think she saw me taking them. But you know this.”

  McNear’s posture had stiffened at my mention of Deck. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then what excuse did Walker give you for wanting to get into my vehicle?”

  He was silent for a moment, fingering the cord of the raised venetian blinds. “Did it ever occur to you that the attendant’s lying?”

  “Yes, but only for a moment. The kid doesn’t look dumb enough to try to shift the blame onto his boss.”

  McNear sighed and faced me. “All right. Brenda suspected you’d been to the bottle house, and she wanted the film to confirm that.”

  “Bull. In order to know about the camera, she would have needed to see me using it out there.”

  He shrugged. “All I know is what she told me.”

  “I think you know a good bit more. Why did she have to confirm that I’d been there?”

  “She was worried about Leon.”

  “What’s he to her?”

  McNear looked uncomfortable. “This won’t go any further?”

  “That depends on what it is.”

  “Well … Leon’s Brenda’s brother. Half brother, actually. You’ve seen him?”

  I nodded.

  “Then you know. He’s a badly damaged man. Came out here to be near her after many years in an institution back in the Midwest. Brenda’s very protective of him.”

  “Then why doesn’t she acknowledge him? Have him live with her?”

  “Leon’s like a wild animal; he can’t be domesticated. He’s better off out there with his bottles and his strange dreams. As for Brenda not acknowledging him”—he shrugged again—“I suppose she’s ashamed. Fancies herself a pillar of the community and doesn’t want people to know she’s got a crazy ex-addict brother. But she looks out for him.”

  I thought for a moment. It still didn’t explain why Walker had wanted my roll of film. She knew I’d been out there and talked with Leon. So why take the film?

  Unless there was something in that wash that she was afraid might show up in the photographs …

  * * *

  The crafts outlet was closed again. I barely slowed as I drove past it, just kept going and turned uphill toward Walker’s house. No pickup in the yard there, no answer to my repeated knocks. I stepped off the porch and tried the strategy I’d earlier used to locate Deputy Westerkamp: ask a neighbor.

  “Brenda?” the pleasant-faced woman who was hanging wash on her line said. “Saw her a while ago loading her backpack and sleeping bag into her pickup. She does that sometimes—just takes off into the desert for a few days. Says she’s an old desert rat at heart.”

  “Where would she go?”

  The woman made a wide gesture with the hand that held a clothespin. “That’s a big desert out there, honey. Brenda never did mention any one place.”

  * * *

  The door of the bottle house stood open. I climbed over the wall, calling Deck’s name.

  No reply, just the creak of the door moving in a light breeze.

  I stepped inside, allowed my eyes to get accustomed to the murky light. The room was empty, the oil lamp turned off. Deck’s sleeping bag no longer lay across the tattered mattress.

  Coincidence that he’d decided to take off at the same time as his half sister? Hardly.

  On my way down the wash to the Land Rover, I studied the surrounding terrain, trying to see anything that would have made my undeveloped photographs damaging to Deck or Walker. But it just looked like any other rain-and-flood-sculpted gully—wider than most but essentially uninteresting and barren.

  Nevertheless, I suspected it wasn’t nearly as uninteresting as it seemed.

  * * *

  The property room of the sheriff’s substation was a walk-in closet off Westerkamp’s office. The deputy went inside, thumped around, cursed some, and emerged red-faced and dusty with a cardboard file box. He dumped its contents unceremoniously on his desk.

  Small blue travel bag with a United Airlines logo. Contents: three changes of underwear, two T-shirts, one pair of jeans, two pair of socks, toiletries; two paperback westerns; half a six-pack of Coors, two packs of Winstons, unused book of matches from a restaurant in Ely, Nevada; handful of tokens for free drinks from a casino in the same town, Triple-A road map of the state, set of lockpicks. I held up one with a serpentine probe and looked questioningly at the deputy. He grinned and shrugged.

  “No wallet or identification?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Keys to the stolen van?”

  “No keys. It was towed to the county impound lot.”

  “No other keys?”

  He shook his head.

  “Was the personal property also wiped of prints?”

  “There were a few partials. Not good enough to run through NCIC.”

  “How’d he pay for his room?”

  “Cash for the first two nights. For the other two, Aces was glad to carry him.”

  “Not a class establishment, then.”

  “They’re doing better now, thanks to your Mr. Gordon.”

  I picked up the paperbacks, thumbed through them; nothing tucked inside. Set them down and began examining the inside of the travel bag for hidden pockets. There weren’t any, but I felt something slender caught beneath the bottom lining. I worked my fingers in there and pulled it free. It was a ballpoint pen; I looked at the printing on it: Keystone Steel Company, Monora, PA.

  I stared at the words. Silver against black. They seemed to shimmer.

  “Nobody saw him leave town?” I asked Westerkamp.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “And the fugitive Walker saw on TV?”

  “Was apprehended later on in South Carolina.”

  “Figures.” I kept staring at the pen, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger.

  “I see things, you know. … It is said that a thief in red will come to steal my secrets. … I am to guard against her. … I see the coyotes feeding on the August man’s flesh and bones. …”

  I looked up at Westerkamp: “First word that comes to mind is ‘greedy’. … Nasty town as well. … That desert out there’s been an unholy graveyard since the first vein of silver was uncovered. … some of them fairly fresh. …”

  “Ms. McC
one, you all right?”

  Not really. Problem here, a big one. I could be hurting the person I set out to help.

  “Ms. McCone?”

  “I’m okay.”

  But I couldn’t keep what I suspected to myself; I’d never been one to circumvent the law in matters like this.

  “Then what—”

  “Deputy, I think I know where you can find your missing man.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “He’s somewhere in that wash where Leon Deck built his bottle house. In one of those unholy graves you were telling me about.”

  Thirteen

  “I hope you’re right about this,” Chuck Westerkamp said, watching two of his officers fan out along the wash in front of us. He was obviously thinking about budgetary constraints and overtime. I, on the other hand, had been worried about him making an illegal search of Leon Deck’s property until he informed me that Deck was merely squatting on county land.

  “Hope you’re right,” he said again.

  “I’m right.”

  “Okay, this fellow comes out here from Pennsylvania looking to get revenge on Gordon for something that went on back there. Would a person really go to all that trouble just because of bad business dealings?”

  “We don’t know if his motive was business-related or personal. But, yes, I think in either case he would. Gordon calls the Keystone turnaround ‘less than successful,’ but I’ve read the files, and taking into account the human factor, I call it a disaster.”

  “All right—he gets here and what happens?”

  We’d been over this at the substation, but I sensed it comforted him to rehash it. If a body turned up in the wash, this promised to be the biggest case of Westerkamp’s career; if one didn’t, he’d have to explain to his superiors why he’d pulled two men off their regular duties on only the word of an out-of-state private investigator with a bizarre theory.

  I said, “There was some sort of confrontation, and the August man, as Deck calls him, was killed.”

  “By Gordon.”

  “We don’t know that, either. It could have been Gordon”—God, how I hoped not!—“or one of his people or one of your townspeople with a vested interest in the turnaround. But whoever killed him, Brenda Walker got involved in disposing of the body.”

  “She probably thought she could confuse us with that tip about him being a fugitive; she thought we’d figure he’d skipped out because she’d made him, and not look real thoroughly. But burying him near her crazy brother’s house? I’m not sure I buy that part of it, not with a whole big desert out there, and Brenda knowing it better than most of us.”

  “The farther the body was moved, the more risk was involved. With it here, she could keep an eye on the grave, make sure it wasn’t disturbed.”

  Westerkamp shrugged, and we began walking toward the house. So far neither of his men had covered much ground or come across anything remotely resembling a grave. After a moment he said, “You don’t think Leon buried the body?”

  “He might have, although I doubt she’d trust him with a task like that. More likely he saw it being buried or found it afterward. The grave could have been disturbed by animals; he made that comment about the coyotes feeding on the August man’s flesh and bones. But no matter how he knew, Brenda persuaded him to keep her secret. And last night after I went to her shop asking about the Gordons, she hurried out here to warn him against telling me.”

  “The thief in red.” Westerkamp tugged at Anna’s cape, which I’d put on against the late-afternoon chill.

  “Right. There’s something that bothers me, though: before Walker left her house last night, she made a phone call, looked fairly agitated while she was talking. To whom?”

  “Well, if we find a body out here, we’ll subpoena the phone-company records. If we find a body.”

  “We’ll find it.”

  We reached Deck’s low wall and stopped beside it. It was close to six by now; the light was fading fast down here in the wash; soon Westerkamp would have to abandon the search or bring in artificial illumination.

  He folded his arms across his chest, looking at the bottle house. “What d’you suppose ever possessed him?”

  “Deck? To build this house? Well, one of the things he told me is that the bottles let the light in but keep everything else out by warping and distorting it. I suppose by ‘everything else’ he could have meant evil.”

  “Evil spirits?” The deputy looked skeptical.

  “Maybe. He’s an ex-addict and probably paranoid. His fears don’t have to be rational.”

  “Whose do? Me, I’m deathly afraid of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. All I’ve got to do is see a jar of Skippy and my palms start to sweat. Go figure.”

  “I used to be afraid of birds.”

  “How’d you get over it?”

  “It just went away of its own accord.” I propped one knee on the low wall, stared over it at the strange stone-and-bottle sculptures.

  Westerkamp said, “You know, it strikes me as stupid of Brenda to take off that way. I mean, what could Deck really tell anybody? Who would believe him?”

  “She panicked. There must’ve been something in the photos that I took out here that made her think I knew more than I really did.” I thought back to the shots I’d snapped: two as I came along the wash, another one of that sculpture—

  Damn!

  “Deputy,” I said then, “I think I know where the grave is.”

  * * *

  The bottles glittered in the headlights of the two off-road vehicles that Westerkamp had had his men drive into the wash and position so their high beams focused on the sculpture. Static and occasional voices crackled from the radios—“I didn’t copy that. …” “Sorry, eleven-four-four, what’s your ETA for Tonopah?” Westerkamp and I leaned against his Jeep, watching the deputies pry the glass and stone apart with pickaxes. By the time they began digging up the ground underneath, it was full dark. By the time they uncovered the remains, the moon rode high.

  One of the deputies climbed out of the hole and signaled to Westerkamp. “Wait here,” he told me and went over there. He stood looking down into the grave for a moment, then came back, his face somber. “He’s down there, all right, what’s left of him. Must’ve been buried shallow at first, because it sure looks like the coyotes got to him.” He reached into the Jeep and radioed in for the county medical examiner and crime-lab personnel, then—almost as an afterthought—put out a pickup order on Walker and Deck.

  When he finished, I asked, “How long will it take your people to get here?”

  “Half hour.”

  “You need me any longer?”

  “For a statement later. Maybe by then we’ll know who he is. Why?”

  “I need to go back to my hotel and call my office.”

  “And your client?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt I could reach him, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. I realize you have to talk with him first.”

  Westerkamp studied my face, nodded. “Okay, go make your call. Come out to the substation when you’re done. And Ms. McCone? Don’t talk to anybody in town about this. Word’ll get out soon enough—there’re an awful lot of scanners in trucks and homes around here—and I don’t want more of a crowd than we can handle.”

  * * *

  Back at the hotel, I reviewed my options, made a quick decision, and placed a credit-card call to my house. The machine answered. I left a message for Mick, then dialed my office number. Was surprised when my nephew’s voice said, “McCone Investigations.”

  “Why’re you there so late?”

  “Shar, where are you? I tried calling Hy’s, but nobody was home.”

  “I’m in Nevada. Why’re you still at the office?”

  “I’m working on something. Are you in Lost Hope?”

  “Yes. What’re you working on?”

  “The Blessing trace.”

  “I thought I told you to give up on it.”

  “You
did, but things’ve been slow here and I got bored, so I started tinkering. And I’ve got something. Yesterday afternoon I borrowed Rae’s car and drove down to Pacifica. You know that old van the Blessings ditched in their yard?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, they took the plates off it, but I copied down the VIN, just in case the registration was current. Ran it by the DMV, and they gave me a name.”

  “A name’s all they’re allowed to give out, and it’s not much to go on.”

  “This one was: Enid Tomchuck. Unusual. So I started thinking, what if this Enid Tomchuck was Sid Blessing’s wife? I called that neighbor lady you talked to back in August, and she said, yes, Mrs. Blessing’s first name was Enid. Now, last summer when you asked me to try to trace those people, I ran a Dataquick statewide real-estate search and came up with nothing. But I couldn’t get out of my head what the neighbor woman told you about the family coming into some money. I mean, what’s the first thing most people do when that happens? They buy a house. But if they got the money illegally, they’re not going to want to call attention to themselves, are they? So I ran another search, on Enid this time, and found out she bought a house in Modesto on August fifth.”

  Right around the time the harassment of Suits began, and a few weeks before Moonshine House blew up. Had the money Sid Blessing came into been a down payment on those acts?

  Mick went on, “There wasn’t any phone number on the property detail, and when I called Information they said it was unlisted. But I ran Tomchuck’s name through Mortgage Leads and got it. Then I called and asked for Sid.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead. Got killed by a hit-and-run driver on September tenth.”

  Two weeks after the explosion. “Where?”

  “In Modesto. You know how those fast-growing valley towns are? One minute you’re in tracts, the next you’re in an orchard? Well, Blessing was found by a construction crew that was framing in some houses in this half-built tract at the edge of town. Very isolated place. He was … kind of squashed in the street. The autopsy showed he was run over late the night before.”

  “Mick, you seem to know a lot about the accident.”