Jackpot (Nameless Dectective) (16 page)

Across the yard, into my car. Back up to Highway 89, north. With all the windows down, I felt the bite of the wind-rush as I drove, smelled the good clean scent of mountain pine and mountain water.

I still felt dirty.

THE DRIVE UP AROUND EMERALD BAY made my palms damp and my fingers clamp tight around the wheel. The two-lane highway climbed to several hundred feet above the deep inlet and hugged its inner rim, so that you had a fine vista of the bay, its one verdant island and long wooded arms, and the sweep of Tahoe beyond; but I couldn’t even look at the view because the road ran smack along the edges of a number of sheer drop-offs and there were no guardrails to create an illusion of safety. This kind of road always makes me edgy because I suffer from acrophobia—just one more in a long line of anxieties. Detectives are supposed to be a version of Superman; not me. I’m Clark Kent, with a pocketful of my own private brand of kryptonite.

On the north side of the bay, the highway dropped back down close to lake level on its way through Bliss State Park. The tightness in me eased, and I was able to turn a part of my mind to what I’d learned from Wendy and Scott McKee.

I knew most of it now—all but a few key links in the chain of events stretching back to the night three weeks ago when David Burnett turned up a suitcase full of Mob money. And the ones I didn’t know yet I ought to be able to learn tonight, at the end of Sweetwater Drive in Paradise Flat. If anybody aside from Arthur Welker and Manny Atwood knew how Burnett had come into possession of the two hundred thousand, it was Jerry Polhemus. Polhemus could also fill me in on the aftermath of his fight with McKee on Monday night, though I didn’t really need him to supply the details. They were easy enough to figure: He didn’t want to spend another night in the cabin because he was afraid McKee might come back, and somebody else—me, for one—might show up; but he was too shaken and too banged up to drive anywhere. Wendy had given him Janine’s Paradise Flat number, so he called her and told her what had happened and she came and picked him up and took him back to the house she was sitting. Neither of them was in a frame of mind to think about locking the cabin door when they left; the last one out may have pulled it closed but it hadn’t been tightly latched, which was why I found the door standing wide open. Tuesday sometime, after my visit to Fallen Leaf Lake, or maybe Wednesday, Polhemus felt well enough to go collect his car and belongings. He still didn’t want to stay at the cabin, so he followed Janine back to Paradise Flat. And that was where he’d been ever since.

Simple.

Most of it was simple, really. I had no doubt now that the explanation of how Burnett had gotten the money would turn out to be simple too, whether or not he’d actually found it. It was only the lies and deceptions that had made it all seem complicated. No fancy plot involving drugs or contraband or big knock-overs; no sinister homicides; no surprises. Just a series of chain reactions brought about by stupidity, cowardice, and moral corruption. Plenty of people had suffered, and at least two of them—Burnett’s sister and fiancée—were going to suffer even more. But hey, that’s life, right? We all suffer, all of us. One way or another, to one degree or another.

As far as I was concerned, it would be over tonight or tomorrow at the latest. I would finally come face-to-face with Janine Wovoka, confront her and Polhemus, and then I would go home to San Francisco and break the news to Allyn Burnett and Karen Salter and write my report and collect the balance of my fee. And that would be the end of it. I had been hired to find out a difficult truth; I had found it out. Mission accomplished.

Never mind that Arthur Welker had been as responsible for Burnett’s suicide as Burnett himself; never mind that he would continue to carry out his own special brand of evil, untouched and untouchable, ever at the ready to destroy anybody else who got in his way. Justice is blind; who says there has to be justice? This is the real world, and in the real world the bad guys win as often as the good guys. More often, these days, because they’re better organized, have better resources, and operate under a much less restrictive set of rules.

But there was nothing I could do about that, and in the long run it was none of my lookout anyway. Why beat my head against a stone wall? So Welker had humiliated me, just as I had humiliated Scott McKee ... so what? Life is full of humiliations large and small; swallow the bitter, savor the sweet. It all evens out in the last analysis.

Clichés.

Hollow truths that were no comfort at all.

This may have turned out to be a basically simple case, but it was also one that would live in my memory and stick in my craw for the rest of my days.

PARADISE FLAT was one of a dozen little communities strung out along the California rim of Lake Tahoe, at the southern end of Rubicon Bay and butted up against the wilderness and recreational acreage of Bliss State Park. Heavily forested mountain slopes extended down close to the water along this stretch, and the highway mostly hugged the irregular shoreline, running in twisty loops through trees and around massive protrusions of granite. But in Paradise Flat, as in some of the other hamlets farther north, there was enough forestland between the road and the lake to support a few score year-round and summer homes, while at the same time providing the owners with plenty of privacy.

I slowed when I came out of the park and began hunting for Sweetwater Drive. I didn’t find it. When I spotted a sign announcing Rubicon, the next little enclave northward, I pulled over and got out the Tahoe map. Sweetwater Drive was on it; the reason I’d missed it was that it didn’t open off Highway 89, as I’d assumed it would. Teach me to consult a map
before
I got to where I was going. I made a U-turn and drove back down the highway to an intersecting road called Sierra Flat, turned there, and three minutes later I was on Sweetwater Drive.

The narrow blacktop meandered through woods, hooked southward past widely spaced homes, then dipped closer toward the lake. I rounded a turn past somebody’s perverted variation on the geodesic dome, and up ahead the road dead-ended at a wall of thick forest. At first I couldn’t see another house and I thought that the perverted dome was the one I wanted; but when I’d gone a little farther, a roofline appeared among the tall pines and Douglas fir growing below the level of the road on my left. The last house on Sweetwater was half hidden in a hollow down there, just back from the waterline.

More of the house came into view, and then a driveway that cut back and down at a sharp, steep angle. I let the car drift over onto the right-hand shoulder, short of the driveway, where there was just enough room to park without blocking the roadway. Then I walked across to where I had a clear look at the house below.

It was good-sized, fashioned of cut pine logs and redwood shakes, with thick woods crowding in close on its far side. A raised redwood deck, mostly invisible from where I stood, overlooked the lake. The driveway ended in a parking area alongside the house. A path led from there to where a flat concrete pier extended into the water, a pair of short wooden floats making a broad
T
at its outer end; a small boat shelter had been built onto one of the floats. Attached to the near end of the house was a carport large enough for two cars. Only one was slotted there now: Jerry Polhemus’s dark red Mercury Cougar.

I watched the place for a minute or so. It wasn’t quite dusk yet so I couldn’t tell if there were any lights on inside. No smoke came from the fireplace chimney.

I moved ahead to the drive, down it to a square of fern-bordered brick that served as a front stoop. There was a button inset into the doorjamb; I pushed that, listened to the distant ringing of chimes. Otherwise I was enveloped in that deep hush that settles over lakefront property at this time of day.

Nobody came to open the door. I pushed the bell again and did some more waiting, looking out over the lake. Sunset colors ran through the sky—layers of dusky rose and old gold, streaks of gray and fading orange. This part of the shore was in shadow, but the sun hadn’t completely dropped behind the High Sierra peaks yet; over toward the Nevada shore, its light lay fire-hot across the surface, creating the illusion that that part of the lake was aflame.

Well, maybe they’d gone out shopping or to have an early dinner, taking Janine’s car. I could sit up on the road and wait for them to return. But a natural reluctance kept me standing where I was; I dislike stakeouts at the best of times, short ones as much as long ones, and I was in no mood for passive waiting this evening. I’d thought that if I could get this interrogation over and done with soon enough, with positive results, I could start back home tonight; maybe make it out of the mountains and as far west as Auburn before I hunted up a motel.

Without thinking about it, I reached down and tried the doorknob. Locked, naturally. I turned off the bricks, but instead of heading back up the drive, I walked down to the pier and stood watching a powerboat whisk past at high speed several hundred yards offshore, half gliding and half bouncing like the flat stones we used to skip when we were kids. Insect hum came from the surrounding undergrowth; pine scent spiced the cool air. But the beauty of the evening and the lakefront was spoiled by patches of algae like green scum floating along the rim of the shore. So much pollution these days, I thought. This kind, and the human variety as practiced by the Burnetts and the Polhemuses and the Arthur Welkers.

When I turned around again I found myself looking up at the deck and a wall of glass where it joined the house. The drapes were open, I noticed, and part of a beamed ceiling was visible inside. A set of steps gave access to the deck from the dock area; on impulse I mounted them, went past some outdoor furniture to a combination picture window and sliding glass door. I put my nose close to the window, shaded my eyes to get a clear look through it.

Spacious living room: beige-brick fireplace, furniture and paneling in muted earth tones, beige-and-brown-tile floor, oval throw rugs the color of autumn leaves. Most of the surfaces were littered with glasses, dishes, overflowing ashtrays, paperback books, sections of newspaper, articles of clothing; Janine was a lousy housekeeper. At the rear was an open bar area, and beyond that a modern kitchen done in the same color scheme. To the left of the bar was what I took to be a hallway—

—and an arm, an outflung man’s arm with the fingers hooked into a misshapen fist.

Somebody was lying sprawled on the hallway floor.

The hair pulled along my neck. I pressed closer to the glass, staring at the arm; it didn’t move. I took a few steps to my right, to try to get a better viewing angle, but there was furniture in the way. All I could see was that bare arm.

I tugged on the sliding door; it wouldn’t budge. My mouth was dry as I hurried across the deck and down the steps and back up alongside the house. Two windows flanked the front door, both made of opaque glass and both locked. A third window toward the carport was also locked. I moved under the carport, past the Cougar, around to the far side where the trees pushed in close and there were thick, fragrant shadows.

A small window midway along was open a couple of inches.

There was a screen over the window; it didn’t take me long to pry it loose and lift it down. I slid the window open as far as it would go, then caught hold of the high sill and hoisted myself up and got my shoulders into the narrow opening. Tight fit, but I managed to wiggle through. Bathroom. Toilet on my right, stall shower on my left. I laid one hand on the shower door to brace myself and climbed down by using the toilet as a step. Went out of there into a wildly disarrayed bedroom and then into the hallway.

The arm belonged to Jerry Polhemus. He was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, lying on his side with his knees drawn up, his other arm bent in under his body. One look at him was enough to tell me he was dead—bloodily dead. Clotted blood covered his midsection and stained his shorts and filled the cracks in the tile floor under him. Shot in the stomach, up under the breastbone. The gun was there, too, down by his feet—his own gun, the Saturday night special he’d threatened me with in San Francisco.

I did not touch him or the gun. But I moved close enough to see that healing bruises discolored his face, a pair of crude bandages covered his broken nose and an area over his left temple; and to determine that the blood hadn’t completely dried yet. Dead only a few hours. Since sometime around five o‘clock.

Now I knew why Janine had called Wendy, and why McKee had said she’d been crying her head off.

But I should have suspected it long before this. Would have, if I’d let myself think about it driving here. Denial: I had not wanted to confront any more violence, any ugly twists or surprises, so I had refused to consider the possibility. I’d wanted it all to stay simple.

But nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. I should have remembered that, too.

Training and an old desire to create order out of chaos drove me back into the bedroom. But there was nothing there to tell me what had happened at five o’clock. All I found were two sets of luggage: Polhemus’s two suitcases and duffel bag, and a pair of women’s bags that I took to be Janine’s. So she hadn’t packed anything to take with her when she left. Just ran—ran scared—after the abortive phone call to Wendy.

Nothing of interest in the bathroom or the other two bedrooms. Back in the hall, I stepped over Polhemus’s corpse, taking care to avoid the blood, and made passes through the living area and kitchen. Nothing in those rooms, either. And no indication that anybody other than Janine and Polhemus had been here recently.

There was a telephone on the kitchen wall. I stopped in front of it, stood there for several seconds without lifting the receiver. Every instinct urged me to call the county sheriff’s department, report what I’d found; give my right name and then wait like a good citizen for the officers to arrive. I had had the misfortune to stumble across murder victims before, and each time I had done the correct and responsible thing. But this time ... this time I felt disinclined to play it by the book. The waiting, the questions, the too familiar and seemingly endless routine—I had no stomach for all of that tonight. But that was not the only reason. There were answers I wanted now more than at any time since I’d begun this investigation, and as quickly as I could get them. In the past I had always been willing to wait and bide my time. Not anymore.