Dead Seed (17 page)

I
HAD MOST OF
the pieces in this puzzle in their proper places. Blackmail had been the motive. Morgenstern’s secret had been the reason for his murder. There had to be a reason for blackmail; there had to be a why.

Sarkissian had called his bribe a bonus, his conspiracy an agreement arrived at to benefit his church. Carol Medford could call her blackmail payment a grant; she was neither obligated nor likely to reveal the why.

Taking this incomplete puzzle into court would be futile. The defense attorney would stress the lack of a why and obfuscate the obvious. The responsible jurors would remember the judge’s beyond-a-reasonable-doubt admonition. One stubborn doubtful juror can result in a hung jury.

Sarkissian would probably desert Kelly, just as Mrs. Lacrosse and her husband had. But they could not testify against him without implicating themselves. They had another compelling bond of unity; they were all citizens with no regard for the police or the law.

The citizens on the sunny side of the law, Carl Lacrosse, Grange, Carol, were putting their self-interest above their duty as citizens. Do you know many alleged citizens who don’t?

Because Carol and Grange were runners, because Carl Lacrosse was a wanderer, Sydney Morgenstern and Juan Garcia were dead. Sins of commission can be taken into court. Sins of omission are more difficult to define. They can too easily be rationalized by the individual’s basic need—survival. We all have to eat, don’t we?

Unless somebody in this complicated maze developed a social conscience, Bernie and I were at a dead end. Bernie would not be working for the next two days; the weekend was his sanctuary.

“You look grumpy,” Jan told me when she came home. “What’s bugging you now?”

“People.”

“The kind of people you and Bernie mingle with are not exactly solid citizens, peeper.”

“They are close enough to it to depress me. How about your solid citizen? Are you educating him?”

She nodded. “He’s not hopeless, only color-blind. Is it time for our twilight opiates?”

“I’ll make them,” I said.

We were sitting out in back, quietly sipping, when Grange came down the steps of the side porch next door.

“Come over and have a drink,” Jan called. “Bring Carol.”

He came over to where we sat. “Carol’s in town, and I’m off the sauce this week. I’ll take a Coke, if you have it.”

When I brought it, he smiled up at me. “I have this uncomfortable feeling that I’m not completely welcome here.”

“Why not? I’m not a judge.”

“But a self-righteous man, according to Carol.”

“Carol doesn’t know my history. I couldn’t afford righteousness when I was working.”

“You can now. I heard you’ve been down to Skeleton Gulch.”

“You heard right.”

“I’ve been thinking about Syd,” he said. “I read about the wallet this Chitty person had. I can identify it for the police. I gave it to him.”

“It has been identified. Chitty has admitted he used some of the credit cards he found in it. He’ll go to trial and plead guilty.”

“Thank God!”

“For grand larceny,” I added. “Not for the death of Juan Garcia or for arson.”

“Was he responsible for that?”

“I am sure he was. Lieutenant Vogel is sure he was. And he is also a strong choice for the killer of Mr. Morgenstern. But the police can take into court only what they can prove. For reasons of which I am sure you are aware, larceny is all they can prove.”

He said stiffly, “You told me you weren’t a judge.”

“I’m not and I’ve cut too many corners to make moral judgments about other people. But this I can assure you of—I have never been directly or indirectly responsible for the death of anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

He stood up and glared down at me. “I think,” he said, “that it is time for me to leave.”

“I agree, Mr. Grange. Don’t hurry back.”

“Wow!” Jan said as he headed home. “That was a low blow.”

“Wow yourself. You know almost as much about this case as I do. But
you
invited him over.”

“For one reason only, Mr. Righteous. I thought he might be ready to tell you something. I hoped that you would use a little finesse.”

“The way I saw it, a low blow might have jarred his conscience.”

“That isn’t the way I saw it.”

“Do you remember,” I asked, “what you told me after your phone conversation with Lee Apoyan?”

“I remember. To stay out of my business.”

“
Correct. In return, you would stay out of mine. You and Lee are in the finesse business. I’m not.”

“True.” She smiled at me. “Should we go to a movie tonight? We can see both Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the same movie at the Cinema.”

“Or,” I pointed out, “we could see low-blow Clint Eastwood all by his macho self in the picture at the Plaza.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Eastwood tonight, Redford and Newman tomorrow night.”

That was our sanctuary weekend, with golf for me on Saturday and golf with Jan and the Vaughans on Sunday.

I phoned my friend on Monday morning to learn if Gus had reported for work. He had. And a woman named Stella Jankowski, he added, had warned him by phone to limit Ketchum’s bets to a total of no more than twenty dollars a week. Did I know who Stella Jankowski was?

“I do. She’s his guardian angel. And if you want to keep Gus around, be damned sure to follow her orders.”

I went back to my charts and my notes.
You go back and tell your friend Lieutenant Vogel to do his homework.
What had Sarkissian meant by that?

It could be the key piece in the puzzle. Home, to Bernie, meant the station. That was his working-day family. Family? They weren’t
all
that close to him.

I phoned the cult and Penelope answered. The boss was not around, she told me; he had an appointment with his attorney in town. I asked her how the guard shifts ran there and she told me. I asked her for the name of the man who ran the night shift.

She gave it to me, but added, “He’s been here for only a week. Mr. Sarkissian fired the man who used to work it.”

She had that name, too, and his address. She said, “We get all our guards from Security Incorporated, all but Gus. Corey told me you got Gus back on the straight and narrow.”

“Not I. His bride-to-be. You could do the same for Corey.”

“I doubt it. But I might marry him, despite that. I wouldn’t want a man I could change.”

She was Jan’s spiritual sister. Lucky Corey.

Our list of suspects had been thin enough. Why hadn’t we checked out the alibis of every person involved? Kelly’s truck had been used; Kelly’s cop friend had not been checked, so far as I knew.

Captain Dahl had received the report about the quarrel at the gate; Bernie probably had never seen it. If he had, the name on the report could have triggered his suspicion. It obviously hadn’t triggered Captain Dahl’s.

I phoned the station. The sergeant who answered told me Vogel wasn’t there; he would be back sometime around three o’clock.

I climbed into my aged chariot after lunch and headed for the domicile of one Kermit Karp. He had been the guard at the gate the night of the Lacrosse-Chitty alibi. If he was still working somewhere on the night shift, he should be home.

He lived in a bright-yellow frame house in the foothills north of town. His wife answered my ring and told me he was in the backyard, planting his vegetable garden.

He was crouched, transplanting tomato plants from small pots to his garden. His back was to me; he turned quickly and looked startled when I called his name.

He was tall and thin, not the prototype of a security guard, except for age. I told him I was working with the San Valdesto Police Department, and told him my name.

His voice sounded relieved. “I was afraid for a second there that my former boss had sent you, Mr. Callahan.”

“Sarkissian? Why should he frighten you?”

He sighed. “We had words before I left there. And his burly friend, Dwight Kelly, struck me as a rough customer. Is that why you’re here?”

“Only partly. Were you on duty the night Mrs. Lacrosse and her cousin came up and asked to talk with her son?”

“Is she a heavy woman? Was she driving Kelly’s truck?”

I nodded.

“I was at the gate that night.”

“Do you remember what time they got there?”

He took a deep breath and hesitated before answering. “I’ve been afraid somebody was going to ask me that question. Is the officer who came up in trouble?”

“Not yet.”

“It seemed innocent enough to me,” he said. “He told me he was not supposed to be patrolling that area until later. But he had this girlfriend down the road he had been—visiting. When he left her place, he said, he saw Kelly’s truck pull into our road. They watch for Kelly’s truck up there. So, naturally, he followed it in.”

“What time was that?”

“Around eight o’clock. He told me, if anybody asked, that I should say it had been ten-thirty. But nobody ever asked until now.”

“Do you know the officer’s name?”

“No, I didn’t see any reason to ask for it.”

“Would you testify as to the time, if we call on you?”

“Of course.”

“Did Sarkissian find out about it? Is that why he fired you?”

“I don’t know if he knew. But that isn’t why he fired me. I told him I was suspicious of the way he seemed to be working with Kelly. And besides, he pays the lowest wages in town, which I also mentioned.”

“Did you find another job?”

He shook his head. “I’m sixty-seven. I’ve saved enough to pad out my Social Security.”

“If you ever need one, let me know. They can use another security guard out at San Valdesto Electronics. I can help you there.”

“You might leave me your phone number,” he said. “The missus isn’t overjoyed with me around the house twenty-four hours a day. Forty-six years I’ve been married, and I still haven’t figured her out.”

“It’s called the feminine mystique,” I explained to him, and gave him my phone number.

The obvious had become more obvious. We had the means and the opportunity. We had everything except the motive. Perhaps we could get the motive now; my romantic neighbors could be served with a writ of subpoena.

Vogel was typing in his office when I walked in. There was a tinge of tobacco odor in the air.

“Quit sniffing,” he said. “The Chief just left and he was smoking. Sit down.”

I sat down.

“I phoned your house,” he said, “but you weren’t home. You were out working, I hope.”

“Somebody has to.” I gave him my story.

He stared at me. “We’re really dumb, aren’t we?”

“Maybe only slow,” I said. “I should have realized, once I learned that Alvin was a mechanic, that hokum about Mrs. Lacrosse’s car being laid up had to be a lie.”

“It was in the garage!”

“Of course. They figured that we’d check to make sure. But let’s take it from the cop’s angle. He needs an excuse to go up to the cult as a witness. He knows that following Kelly’s truck in is a legitimate excuse. Dahl had no reason to connect it with the murder.”

“Did this Karp give you the name of the officer?”

“He didn’t know it. But we could look it up, couldn’t we?”

“Right now,” he said. “Wait here.”

When he came back, I asked, “Kelly’s friend?”

He nodded.

“For the umpteenth time, does he have a name?”

“He has. That will be handled by internal affairs.”

“I get the picture. I’m external.”

“For now. His name will be revealed in time. Don’t fret about it.”

“Screw you,” I said, and stood up.

“Come on, Brock! It’s protocol. You know that!”

“You can take your protocol,” I told him, “and shove it in there right next to your prostate. This cheap peeper has now retired for a second time.”

“Brock, damn you, come back here!” he called.

I was out of the room by then, the door slammed behind me.

The indignant citizen was a role I loved to play. And I had memories of my cheap-peeper days and how our noble guardians of the peace had treated me then. Cops are cops, and God knows we need them. But they too often forget, as most bureaucrats do, that they are our servants, not our masters.

A show of indignation now and then could keep Bernie from going that route. He was one cop who had more than the average quota of citizen in him. As his good friend, it was my duty to keep the ratio constant.

Motive, means, and opportunity. The triumvirate would be complete once Carol and Grange were forced to testify in court. They would be represented by the most distinguished law firm in town, with two Harvard Law School graduates on its staff.

And who would be the defendant—Alvin Chitty or Mrs. Lacrosse?

Now might be the time for a deal. Alvin was facing a term behind bars. Immunity from that might convince him to testify against his cousin.

Corey came around four-thirty, bringing another revelation with him. “You know what Joel thought?” he asked me.

“Not yet,” I said.

“That thing you told me about Mrs. Lacrosse and the axe?”

“I’m not likely to forget that.”

“Joel had it switched. He was sleeping at a friend’s house that night. When he came home from school, his mother showed him that smashed headboard and told him that his father had tried to kill her and then had taken off.”

“And Joel believed her?”

Corey nodded. “No wonder he resents his father.”

“He has reason enough without that. I hope you straightened him out.”

“I did.”

“And—?”

“And he started to cry. Seventeen years old and he cried!”

“You never cried when you were seventeen?”

He gave it a lot of thought as he sipped his beer. “Once,” he admitted. “I was selling roofing for this man in town during summer vacation. He promised me a drawing account against commissions. I didn’t sell any roofing the first week, and he refused to pay me my drawing account.”

“That’s different,” I said with a straight face. “That’s worth crying about.”

“I knew you’d agree,” he said.

B
ERNIE PHONED BEFORE DINNER. “ARE YOU
still steaming?” he asked.