Scare Tactics (28 page)

“What about the fingerprints?”

“I’m no expert. I remember most of what they taught me at the state patrol school. Chances are these are the fingerprints of a woman—or maybe a child. Do you have the envelope?”

“No. There was nothing on it but a typed address: Governor John Guthrie, the Capitol, and so on. And a
personal,
underlined three times. Postmarked here in the city, eleven o’clock Monday night.”

“When did you receive it?”

“Today. Paul opens most of the mail marked personal, unless it has a name on it which he recognizes. He opened this one, thought to tear it up, then had one of those cases of the shivers he gets from time to time. So he had to show it to me. And bring up ...”

The Governor took his cigar out of his mouth and sat glowering at it.

“Bring up what?”

“You know how Dunhill is,” the Governor growled. “He’s a damned superstitious old lady. Always reading more into these crank notes than anyone else would. For some reason the Hilda Brudder thing has been on his mind again. I ran him off before he could rehash the whole case and get himself thoroughly hysterical.”

Practice nodded, his eyes on the storybook dragon and knight, wondering what tale the drawing had illustrated. Was the knight one of King Arthur’s or some unknown Prince? Or even a commoner proving his mettle? His knowledge of fairy tales was sketchy; there had been few books in his father’s house.

With a faraway look in his eye, Practice put the drawing carefully on the desk and began hunting in one of the drawers for an envelope.

The Governor smoked silently in his chair, his eyes closed again. Perhaps he was thinking of Hilda Brudder, who had been the first of little Chris’s nursemaids. She had been a part of the Guthrie household from the day Dore brought Chris home from the hospital and in a panic gave the baby over to Hilda’s care. Hilda had the instinct for raising children which Dore seemed to lack entirely.

Hilda was a big-shouldered, round-faced woman who had spent the pre-World War years of her life in Bremen. She spoke competent English, had the constitution of a dray horse, and liked nothing better than to spend her free time tramping around the woods or, in winter, to skate with surprising deftness on the frozen ponds and streams around the city.

As soon as Chris was able to walk, she began taking him to the park at the edge of the city. Shortly after Chris’s third birthday Hilda was killed.

Two women found Chris, alone and hysterical, wandering on one of the paths, with blood in his hair and on his face. At about the same time, Hilda was discovered at the edge of the lake, sitting cross-legged, slumped against a tree. She had been shot cleanly through the neck. Chris hadn’t been able to say much. Apparently he was sitting in her lap when the bullet struck. The subsequent investigation turned up no information. The Commissioner of the Highway Patrol, a good friend of Guthrie’s, concluded that Hilda had been killed by a stray bullet from someone hunting in the hills and woods above the lake. Several hunters who had been in the vicinity were tracked down and questioned, but all denied shooting in the direction of the park.

After that, Chris had had a succession of nurses with whom he had been moody and uncooperative. Lucy had done a lot for the boy in the year and a half she had been at the mansion, and if Chris remembered Hilda Brudder at all he never spoke of her.

“Why should Dunhill bring up Hilda Brudder?” Practice asked now.

Guthrie got to his feet and stuffed his cigar into an ashtray.

“You know what he thought at the time. Some nut was taking a whack at Chris and got Hilda instead.”

“He should have given up that idea by now,” Practice said. “If someone had been gunning for Chris, he could have killed Chris right after Hilda.”

“Sure, I know. Dunhill’s an old lady.” Guthrie gestured with one hand. “That thing ...”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

Guthrie shrugged. “Throw it away, I suppose. Still—it’s weird.”

“Most of the vicious mail you get is the Dear Bastard, I’m going to kill you, sort of thing. This is more complicated. The fantasy involved is no spur-of-the-moment inspiration. I’m curious about these fingerprints, the bloodstains—if they are bloodstains.”

Guthrie had gone to his closet and was standing with the door open, choosing a suit.

“I’m curious, too,” he said softly.

“You don’t have any idea who it came from?”

“No idea. See what you can come up with, but don’t waste a lot of time.”

“I’ll get on it in the morning.” 

“No.” Guthrie took a dark gray suit from the closet and held it up to inspect it for creases. “Do it tonight. Bill Dylan’s probably still in his office. Give him a call.”

Bill Dylan was the local agent of the FBI, who ran a one-man office in the Department of State building.

“Why Dylan?”

“If you start sleuthing around with that drawing and those fingerprints, word’ll get out. Oh, it’s nothing; I know it’s nothing. But the thing is ridiculous enough to make me look damned silly, and I’ve got enough on my mind without a lot of people giggling behind my back.”

“Dylan it is,” Practice said, sealing the drawing into a clasp envelope. “I’ll call the Commissioner and have him send one of his boys over to drive you to the rally.”

“Won’t be necessary. Luke can drive.”

“If I’m not going, I want somebody I can depend on to be there,” Practice said obstinately.

Guthrie sighed. “Suit yourself.”

“I’ll either be at Lex’s Steak House getting my dinner while Dylan does my work or here at the mansion,” Practice said. He went out, the yellow clasp envelope tucked under his arm.

B
ill Dylan turned the rust-stained page Practice had brought him, then laid it atop the envelope and settled back in his chair, gazing out of the window of his tenth-floor office at the flow of traffic in the street below.

“Why bring it to me?” he asked Practice. “I’ve seen political cartoons more threatening than this.”

“The bloodstains, for one thing.”

“Can’t say for sure that it’s blood.”

“Assuming it is. The whole concept is grotesque and a little frightening. I’d like to know who sent it. Maybe he’s Homebody I should talk to.”

Dylan stood up and began rolling down the sleeves of his shirt
.

“Whoever the sender is, he’s probably eager for attention. He might as well have signed his name.”

“Are those fingerprints good enough for a trace?”

“I think so,” Dylan murmured, holding the paper up to the light again. “And your man, or your woman, if that’s the case, must have known that. Of course, the prints might not he those of the sender.”

“Can you work on it for me, Bill?”

“Officially I can’t. But ...” The FBI agent glanced at his watch. “I’m already keeping half the file clerks in this place on overtime. I could drop this off at the state patrol lab on my way to dinner. Truscott owes me a favor. Shouldn’t take long for his department to test these stains and photograph the prints. I’ll send a set of photographs over to the ten o’clock plane and have the girls downstairs check the classifications through the state files. Are you in a hurry for the data?”

“I’d like to get this thing cleared up.”

“It’ll take six hours at the most to run through the state files. Probably two days by wire from Washington, if the subject is still living. I wish I had the envelope. Guthrie shouldn't have thrown it away.”

“More likely his secretary. Thanks a lot, Bill. The Governor appreciates this.”

Dylan grinned. “The hell with him. It’s his duck blind I’m interested in. Best location on the lake.”

—

They went down together in the elevator and parted on the terrace of the new state office building. It was full dark and the neon of the Congress Hotel on the hill flashed redly in the sky. The air had turned chilly and Practice wished he had remembered his trench coat as he walked in the direction of the hotel. He had no plans for the evening other than a leisurely dinner at Lex’s, the best steak house in town. After that, it would be several hours before he knew if the fingerprints on the drawing had turned up in the limited files of the state’s investigation bureau.

A man in a winter topcoat and muffler dashed down the steps of the Congress Hotel’s main entrance in front of him, and Practice called, “Fletch! Dr. Childs ...”

Fletcher Childs hesitated, then gathered himself and hurried on for a few strides. Then he stopped and looked cautiously around. He smiled.

“Oh, hello, Jim. Didn’t recognize—thought it was one of my patients. Didn’t want to get started on gallbladder diets in the middle of Tenth Street.” He was a tall, stooped man with the kind of prim, professorial face reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson. Dr. Fletcher Childs, however, preferred horn-rimmed glasses, which he continually had to adjust on the bridge of his nose. “I’m in a flap. Haven’t dressed and the dinner starts in three quarters of—suppose Lucy’s on your mind, too. Why don’t you walk over to the parking garage with me, if you—hell of a thing, I admit I don’t know what to say to her.”

“What’s on your mind?” Practice said noncommittally, puzzled by the doctor’s reference to his sister.

They waited for a cruising taxi to pass and hurried across the street.

“Why would he just run off?” Dr. Childs muttered. “Suppose I frightened—I might have said something—but no; I remember, I didn’t say ...” He flashed a look at Practice, who was keeping pace with him but not without effort.

“What I said was,” he went on, as if he were simplifying a point for one of his classes at the medical school: “ ‘Lucy? Is that you, Lucy?’ And I flashed my light in the garden, because it was dark. The moment the light touched him, he threw up his arm, over his face, then turned and ran. Right through the shrubbery. Made a terrible mess. I Lad to call the nursery and have them send a man out. And Lucy ...”

“What about Lucy?” Practice asked patiently, knowing Fletch Childs well enough to let him run on. He might circle the point of his story several times, but he always landed on it dead center.

Dr. Childs raised a hand to steady his slipping glasses. The two men had stopped just inside the entrance of the city parking lot, and the doctor burrowed deeper inside his muffler with his chin, as if an icy wind were scouring the street.

“She just sat there in the swing, long after the boy had run away, with tears on her face, looking after him, crying. Hardly said a word to me. She looked very unhappy. Didn’t stay
that way for long. You understand? Came into the kitchen while I was having my medicine and kissed me on the cheek and went up to bed. She was all right then.”

“This was last weekend, when Lucy was off,” Practice said slowly.

“Yes, yes. I dozed off about nine o’clock in my room, but the alarm woke me at ten of twelve. Time to take my medicine. You understand? And I heard voices in the garden. Low. Couldn’t make out what was said. But I recognized Lucy’s voice. Didn’t think anything of it. I thought it must have been you.”

“I was out of town.”

“Remembered. The other voice got louder, but he wasn’t—talking. More like making a speech. Reciting. Is this clear?” Dr. Childs angled a look at Practice, as if he suspected him of skepticism. “Finally got on my nerves, high-pitched voice, almost hysterical. Took my light and went out by the kitchen door. Just to see—to see ...”

“To see if Lucy was all right?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“She
was
all right? Except for the tears, I mean.”

The doctor nodded, almost losing his glasses.

“Who was it? Had you seen him before?”

“Well, no,” Dr. Childs said, and peered at his wrist-watch. “Never really
saw
the boy—until last Sunday night.”

“How do you mean?”

He fidgeted. “Once before, when Lucy was home, he came. Knocked on the door. He wouldn’t come inside. They stayed on the front porch for about an hour.”

“Did Lucy tell you who he was?”

“He was a friend, she said. A friend who—no—she didn’t say
friend.
Someone who needed her.” The doctor nodded soberly into his muffler. “I suppose—you understand? When she was in nursing school, all kinds of people came to see her. People with troubles. Too many troubles.” Abruptly he turned away. “Forty minutes,” he said fretfully. “Important night. May I carry you ... ?”

“I’m just going across the street for dinner, Doctor. Do you know what this boy looks like?”

Dr. Childs shook his head. “Tall. Taller than you. And thin.” He took several quick steps up the ramp to the parking levels, then turned and looked back. “Very white face. Like a clown’s. Hard to say—that face, that voice. You understand? Maybe it wasn’t a boy at all.”

In a few moments he had disappeared up the ramp and Practice turned thoughtfully toward the street, chewing on the end of a paper match in the absence of a cigarette. Dr. Childs’s disjointed story had given him several things to think about, all concerning Lucy.

The parents of Lucy and Fletcher Childs had died when Lucy was very young. Fortunately her brother was considerably older than she, had finished medical school and his residency, and was able to make a home for her—a home inevitably dominated by young doctors and medical discussions, so that Lucy grew up wanting to be a nurse. She was also somewhat timid and lonely; and Fletch, who could spare her little time, was strict about her upbringing. She saw very little of boys until she enrolled at the state university.