Jimmy the Stick (9 page)

Her voice and expression were bitter. “Perhaps we really are cursed.”

Later, I stood at the window of my darkened room. Outside, the headlights I'd seen before were still there. But were they the same lights? I couldn't really tell. They did seem to be moving at the same slow speed. Then the lights of a second vehicle appeared, approaching the first, and the second car stopped. It looked like the two drivers had stopped to talk to each other.

Then I heard, faintly, the grinding of gears as both cars began to roll slowly in opposite directions. I looked out, letting the damp wind chill my face. Ten minutes later, the cars passed again and stopped even more briefly. As I remembered the roads, they could be circling the house. About twelve minutes later, they approached, paused, and passed each other again.

I was still staring out when I saw movement in a shadow outside, at the edge of the light from the ground-floor windows. Then a figure in dark clothes stepped into the faint light, and a pale face looked up at me. At that distance it seemed to be a white mask, but it might have been a naked face staring upward. I couldn't make out the features or even much of the shape of the body. I opened the window for a better look, and the figure backed away and disappeared into the trees. I stared out the window for a while longer but didn't see anything else. Damn, I thought, this place is getting to me. First the crazy drunk waltzes in and then somebody stabs a doll and dumps a couple of gallons of blood and leaves it in the baby's room. Now there's somebody, maybe the same guy who did the doll, hanging around outside. This is just nuts.

I went back down to the kitchen and made another sandwich. That always calms me down. I ate standing over the sink and took a closer look at the incredible amount of strange foods they had for the baby. The shelves were filled with cereals and powders and medicines from Switzerland and Germany. There was even a box in the refrigerator labeled “Little Ethan” that had more stuff in bottles that I couldn't identify.

For the rest of the night I prowled the house and checked the locks on all the exterior doors and windows that Mears had shown me. Just before dawn, with the first faint gray on the horizon, I heard activity in the kitchen. I changed my shoes for sturdier boots, and grabbed my heavy cane, the one I used outdoors. I got my overcoat and hat, and went downstairs to the front doors. Outside, the ground sparkled with damp frost. I wanted to find the place where I'd seen the figure from the window.

The tree-lined drive stretched from the road to the house and on to a good-size garage that had been painted to match the house. I remember how cold that first morning felt. And how quiet it was compared to what I was used to every morning after I closed up the speak. I buttoned my coat and walked around the house on a wooden porch that led to the back.

On the other side, the land sloped down to the lake and the boathouse. In the faint light, I could see the shape of the sanatorium on the other side of the lake. It was a two-story stone building with some kind of tower and a stone wall that came to the water's edge. As I stood on the porch, I heard the slow
clop
of a draft horse's hooves and the rattle of a wagon. A moment later, it came into view, following a shallow rutted track. I realized it was on the same little road that Spence and I had taken on that first day, when we delivered the booze. The wagon was filled with coal. The driver, dressed in a mackinaw coat, muffler, and hat, got up close to the house and tugged lightly on the reins. He didn't need to. The big horse knew where to stop.

The man looped the reins around the hand brake, leaped down, and walked to the base of the house to lift up a small door. After propping it open, he pulled down a metal chute from the wagon and set it against the lip of the door. Back in the wagon, he shoveled coal down the chute. The pieces rattled loudly as they slid down into the basement even though the guy obviously tried to keep the noise down. It took him ten minutes to unload half the wagon.

As the driver was leaving, he saw me standing on the porch watching him. Obviously startled, he jerked on the reins. “G'morning, sir,” he said, touching his hat. I nodded and watched the wagon until it disappeared in the back around the house.

I walked down the steps to the stubby grass and crossed to the tree line where I'd seen the figure a few hours earlier. The open space and bare woods spooked me. I was used to the noise and crowds and color of the city. Here, there was only the empty, washed-out winter landscape, all pale grays and browns. It was not my world. What the hell was I doing there, besides freezing my ass off? Was I was going to find footprints or a broken twig or a scrap of cloth caught on a branch like some Indian tracker in the movies? What a dope.

As I turned back to the house, I saw a fat man close by staring at me and smiling. It was Dietz, the groundskeeper I'd seen talking to Spence and Dr. Cloninger. He still had the little .22 rifle in the crook of his arm.

“A bit early for a walk, isn't it, Mr. Quinn?” He clamped a curving briar pipe between his teeth and fired a match on a cracked yellow thumbnail. Spit rattled in the barrel of the pipe as he lit the tobacco. Even in the cold air, a pungent mix of pipe smoke, horses, human sweat, and damp leaves wafted off him.

“I'm Dietz.” He stuck out his hand. “And you're Mr. Spencer's gunman, here to keep little Ethan safe from your fellow desperadoes.”

The accent might have been German or Danish but carried a cheerful lilt. “Best keep on your toes, city feller. There's many a strange beastie in these parts.”

“Sure are. I saw one last night.”

Dietz's eyes narrowed behind the smoke. “What's it you mean?”

“Just a few hours ago, I was in my room, looking out at the lake.” I gestured with my stick. “I saw the lights of two cars. They might have been circling the house. And then I saw a person, right about here at the edge of the woods, watching the house.”

“Must've been a deer, or just a city boy's eyes playing tricks on him. You never know what you're going to find in these woods.”

“Wasn't a deer. It was a person. Any idea who might be casing the house at four in the morning?”

Dietz's voice took an edge. “You didn't see anyone. It's my business to know what happens on this property. I look after things. If there was a party creeping about in the night, I'd know about it, and I'm telling you there's no such thing.” He chomped down on the pipe and glared, daring me to disagree with him. I wondered why he was so damned insistent about it.

“Come along now. Mrs. Conway will have our coffee ready.”

We'd just started up the slope when the police car skidded to a stop and Deputy Parker jumped out and waved for us to come up.

We reached the driveway, and Parker said, “Get in. Sheriff wants to see you.” He opened the rear door. “Not you, Dietz. I don't want you smelling up my cruiser. Just Quinn.”

“What's going on?”

Parker was a young guy with a determined air, not as openly angry and obnoxious as his sheriff but experienced enough as a cop to expect to be obeyed.

“Get in,” he barked once more.

I turned toward the house. “I haven't had my coffee.”

“Goddammit, Quinn, this is important. If you don't want to be charged with murder, you'll get in the fucking car. Now.”

Dietz said, “Maybe you better do as the man says, young fella.”

I thought about my choices, then said to Dietz, “Tell Mrs. Pennyweight that I had to leave.” I got in the front seat.

The deputy dropped the shift lever into first and took off as fast as he could without spraying gravel. Like the guy delivering the coal, he didn't want to disturb the rich folk. At the gate he turned right, still speeding as we hurried along narrow roads through thick woods.

Being in a disagreeable mood without my coffee, I was about to needle Parker about Flora, but he looked even more disagreeable than me. So I let it lie, and thought about Connie Halloran. It was too early for her to be up. Normally, this time of morning we'd be in my bed at the Chelsea. Frenchy'll know where she is, I thought, and she must've seen Marie Therese by now. Hell, where was she?

Parker slowed as we topped a low rise. Ahead, smudge pots and flares burned on the blacktop. The road curved sharply to the left. A red Marquette Roadster had missed the turn and gone straight, plowing a muddy fifteen-foot path through the underbrush. The grill was crunched between two trees, both scarred white where the fenders had sliced through the bark. Black evening clothes and white underwear were scattered around the car and in the branches.

Two police cars were parked on the side of the road. Parker stopped behind them and we got out. Sheriff Kittner stood where the Marquette had cut through the brush. He looked like he'd been up since the business with the blood and the doll, shoulders sagging under a shapeless coat, hat slipping down over his eyes.

Two other cops wearing bulky greatcoats came stumbling out of the woods. Their legs were wobbly and one of them was wiping his mouth like he'd just thrown up. Chief Kittner paid no attention to them. He said, “This way, Quinn,” and marched toward the Marquette.

I followed slowly, picking the way with my cane, trying to keep the mud off my good boots. Kittner bellowed, “Hurry up, goddammit, we haven't got all day.”

“Screw off, fatso,” I said, and walked more slowly. The other three cops stopped what they were doing to see how the sheriff would react.

He blustered, “Parker, get him over here,” stomping past the wrecked car as he marched into the woods. The deputy didn't move.

“Don't bother,” I said, and followed the sheriff. Parker followed me.

Fordham Evans, last seen mumbling nonsense at the Pennyweight house, was naked, with rolls of fat gently swaying in the wind.

He'd been spread eagled against a wide tree, with his hands nailed to the trunk. His body had turned a cold bluish gray. His head lolled forward, a purple tongue protruding from purple lips. A damp wind kicked up, vibrating his pendulous lower lip slightly. There was a small black hole in his chest above the right nipple. An acorn-sized nubbin was visible in the shadow beneath his sagging belly. Not much blood, virtually none.

Parker walked over to the inert body as Sheriff Kittner lit a Lucky Strike. “You admitted threatening him last night. Said you were going to shoot him in the heart. That's just what happened. Maybe you decided to finish the job.”

Kittner was so damn ridiculous, I almost laughed. “In a pig's ass. Did he make a habit of busting into other people's houses in the middle of the night or just the Pennyweight place?”

“That's none of your—”

“Did Deputy Parker follow him all the way home?” I continued. Parker shook his head, leaning down to study something on the ground by Evans's feet. The frozen mud was covered with horse tracks.

“I'll want to see the pistol you had last night,” said Kittner.

“It's in the gun room.” I saw no reason to mention the Detective Special in my pocket.

“What did he say last night before we got there?”

“A bunch of nonsense. Crazy jabber about hotels and money that he owed Spence and that Spence owed him. He was pretty well boiled, and I think he'd been dipping into something else besides alcohol.”

Sheriff Kittner flushed, squaring his shoulders angrily. “If you mean narcotics, we don't have that kind of problem here. Maybe it's nothing to sneeze at where you come from, but not here, not in my jurisdiction. Anyway, that isn't important.”

He peered at me more intently with an expression that was meant to be shrewd and cunning. It came off as a squint. “This homicide didn't have anything to do with drugs. Like the incident last night at the Pennyweights', it's part and parcel of the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

I laughed, and Parker's head snapped up. This was news to the young deputy.

The sheriff was too pleased with himself to notice. “You think it's a coincidence that the most famous child in America is stolen from his parents' home and two days later, less than forty miles away, an attempt is made on another child and a man is murdered in this bizarre fashion? I doubt that Colonel Schwarzkopf and Lieutenant Keaten will see it that way.”

I shook my head. “He wasn't murdered.”

Kittner snorted an ugly laugh. “What are you saying? Did he nail himself to that tree?”

“I'm saying he isn't dead.”

Parker turned to put two fingers on the blue man's throat. “He's right! Sweet Jesus, Evans is alive!”

The Cloninger Sanatorium ambulance got there twenty minutes later. By then, two deputies had used heavy pliers to pull the long nails out of Evans's hands, and one had donated his overcoat to cover the naked body. As they strapped the fat man onto a stretcher, his eyes popped open and then his mouth opened and closed like a fish. It took two male nurses and two deputies to get the stretcher onto the road.

Dr. Cloninger, still in his heavy overcoat, white smock, and thick glasses, watched them struggle. When they reached the ambulance, he examined the wound and then checked Evans's pupils. He said, “Wait one moment.” Then he took a leather case from his breast pocket and unzipped it to reveal two glass syringes, one filled with a dark amber fluid, the other with some clear stuff.

He said, “Alcohol swab.” One of the male nurses jumped to produce one. Cloninger gave Evans a quick wipe and shot before they loaded up the bluish body.

Cloninger turned to me and said, “You are Walter's friend, are you not?” He had a faint German accent. The daylight didn't do him any favors. His bloodless, corpselike face would give anyone nightmares. I figured he understood exactly what effect he had on people and liked it.

“That's right, I'm Jimmy Quinn.”

“You had words with Evans last night. It appears that your aim was a little high. Better luck next time,” he said with a chilly little smile as he got into the ambulance.