The Bohemian Murders (32 page)

In my lap I had Pete’s gun, having found it on the floor when I went in to change; I picked it up now and pointed it at him. It was large and heavy, the type that is called a revolver. I am nowhere near as practiced at shooting as I am at slashing, but Pete did not know that—which was just as well. “I disagree,” I said. “I think you will tell me exactly where she is, and you will not try to misdirect me, because if you do I will shoot you in the foot.”

“You bitch.”

“I am quite serious. May I point out to you that if shooting you in the foot does not suffice, you have another foot, and knees, and so on.”

Pete shrugged the shoulder I’d pierced, then winced as the motion pulled at the cloth stuck with dried blood to the wound. The pain must have made a timely reminder, for he gave up the bravado. “I guess you do mean it.
Okay, she’s in this kind of mee-dee-val tower down to the end of Brax’s property. Some old guy built the thing out of rocks like you find down by the water, back a long time ago when all that land was El Rancho Pescadero. I helped Brax fix it up, turn it into sort of a hideout. The ladies like a tower, he says, they think it’s romantic. Har! I bet your friend Phoebe ain’t been finding it any too romantic.”

The Maxwell’s carriage lamps gave our passage a ghostly glow in the fog. I had no difficulty staying on the road, but I did involuntarily shudder now, both at his words and because we were passing the place where Pete had knocked me out. Though it was low on my list of questions, thus reminded I could not resist asking, “Why did you hit me in the head?”

“To get them pictures for Brax.”

“You were wearing a mask and bandana over your face—I couldn’t have identified you. You could have just asked me to hand over the pictures, and I would have. You didn’t have to hit me, especially not that hard!”

“So?” He looked away from me, out into the fog. “I like to hit people. I ain’t no sissy. Brax shoulda let me take you too, along with that Broom bitch. But he said you bein’ the lighthouse keeper, if you disappeared it would cause too much of a fuss, I should just get the pictures.”

I let that pass. “Braxton paid you to kidnap Phoebe?”

“Paid me to help him do it. I told him you was a troublemaker, you’d never let it alone. From the minute Tom called Brax and said there was these women been messin’ around and we better go get that body—”

“Tom, at Mapson’s, told Braxton that Phoebe and I were there?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you figure out none of this? I thought you was supposed to be so smart. Brax thinks you’re really something, you know, that’s mainly why he didn’t want you hurt. He wanted me to do stuff that’d scare you but not really hurt you. I told him it wouldn’t do no good.”

“Like poisoning the water and loosening the carriage wheel. And tonight, setting fire to the barn.”

“Yeah, except the fire tonight was my idea. That sanctimonious son of a bitch Quincy, I hate his guts. It was kinda amusing for a while, workin’ out here, knowin’ the damage I’d done, plannin’ what else I could do—but after a while I just couldn’t take no more of Quincy. So I thought I’d do him some mischief, burn up his barn. Maybe he’d get out and maybe he wouldn’t. If you hadn’t woke up so fast, I’da got you too!”

I turned the Maxwell into the Del Monte Forest at the Pacific Grove gate. Ghostly, mist-shrouded trees closed in all around us, even overhead. I said, “I’d like to know exactly what you mean by that but before I ask, there is something I want to go back to. The woman whose body was at Mapson’s, Sabrina Howard. I presume either Braxton killed her, or paid you to do it.”

“Heh, heh, heh!” A low chuckle, wicked, tinged with twisted amusement. “Then you presume wrong.”

I had to slow the car. Here in Del Monte Forest the fog was so thick I could barely see the edge of the pavement. “But her shoe was found near where Braxton lives. If he didn’t kill her, then all the rest of it makes no sense. You can’t expect me to believe that.”

“Brax, he had his reasons.”

I took my eyes from the foggy road for a moment. All this time I’d had one hand on the gun and one on the steering wheel. I raised the weapon and aimed it at Pete’s nearest foot. “And what were his reasons?”

“Hey, he didn’t tell me. Okay? All I know is, when we went to get the body from Mapson’s, Brax said it would be bad for business if anybody found out who she was, on account of her havin’ been known to work for him.”

I mulled this over. It made a certain amount of sense—if Braxton were doing something shady or criminal, he wouldn’t want the police coming around and asking him questions—but still it was hard to believe. I decided to move on to the next obvious question. “What did you do with Sabrina’s body after you took it from the mortuary?”

Pete’s eyes shifted from my face to the gun in my hand, and back, before he answered. “I buried her out here in the forest. Nobody’ll ever find the grave. Brax
didn’t want to know where I buried her, and I don’t even think I could find it again myself.”

Damn! But I had to admit he was being cooperative. I lowered the gun and a few moments later asked casually, “By the way—if you had
gotten
me tonight, what did you intend to do with me?”

Pete Carlson didn’t answer for a long time. I watched him from the corner of my eye, saw how he stared at me. He exuded an ugly feeling that I supposed must be hate, but what had I ever done to make Pete Carlson hate me? He didn’t even know me! Finally he broke the silence with a snort of derision.

“Your friend Mr. Braxton Loves-the-Ladies Furnival is gone. He left early last night. He said I could have the bitch in the tower to do anything I want with. All by herself, she’s not much fun—I know, ’cause I had her already. She just lies there, don’t wiggle nor squeal nor nothin’, and besides, she’s ugly as a foot. So I was gonna take you over there …”

He half turned toward me. His eyes were glittering, and I could feel the hate. My right hand closed over the gun while my left kept the Maxwell on track through the fog in the murky half-light of approaching dawn. I let up on the gas a little more, slowing the car to a crawl.

Pete said with a sneer, “I was gonna take you over there to the tower and fuck the both of you.”

Having never heard that word before, I had no idea what it meant, but from the context I could guess. I steeled myself not to show the reaction Pete was waiting for.

In a moment, when I didn’t react, he continued: “I’da kept you alive for a while, played with you. Who knows, maybe you’d have figured out how to escape, seein’ as how you’re so smart. ’Course it’s pretty hard to get out of a place with nothing but bare stone walls—”

In a flash, bonds and all, he rose up and flung himself sideways at me. There was no time to think, only to react. My hand was on the gun but I never felt the heft of it, or the recoil after. I shot Pete Carlson.

My ears rang. The car tilted off the road. Pete’s weight fell across me; I could reach neither the gearshift nor the
steering wheel. So I used my feet, jamming both of them quick and hard onto the brake, hoping that way to kill the motor before I crashed into a tree.

With a lurch and a cough the Maxwell came to a rolling stop right up against the broad trunk of a cypress. Even before the car stopped rolling I pushed open the door and scrambled out, frantic to get away. My blouse and skirt, where Pete had fallen on me, bore a wide band of blood. Panting and wild, I aimed the gun, my hand clamped to it like a vise. I blinked, shook my head, took in great gulps of air.

He wasn’t moving. His head lolled upside down in the open car door, half off the seat. Still pointing the gun and holding it now with both hands, I took a step closer. Then another. Pete’s eyes were open and so was his mouth. He looked a little surprised.

“Phoebe! Phoebe, it is I, Fremont Jones!” I called out loudly as one by one I tried the keys on the ring I’d taken from Pete Carlson’s bloody pocket. I was not sure how long it had taken me to find this picturesque tower that held Phoebe prisoner. Since the fog was thinning, every now and then letting through a strong shaft of sunlight, I estimated the hour to be later than nine o’clock.

“Phoebe? Do you hear me?” I myself could hear nothing on the other side of the stout oaken door, which was banded in rusting iron and secured with an equally rusty padlock.

At last a key slipped all the way into the lock and turned easily; in spite of its ancient appearance the lock’s inner mechanism had been oiled. I pushed the heavy door inward on creaking hinges and announced as I entered, “Phoebe, it’s Fremont. I’ve come to take you home.”

Phoebe stood near a fire pit centered in the floor of this round room. She had lost a great deal of weight. Her eyes were huge in her small, bony face, deeply shadowed and darkly ringed. Her hair and clothes were unmentionably filthy, and she looked at me without comprehension. Then she looked up over our heads, and back at me
again. I wondered if perhaps the long imprisonment had played havoc with Phoebe’s wits.

I too looked up, to see what drew her eye. The round tower walls leaned slightly inward, like a funnel, and were open to the sky. At the top, some twenty-five or thirty feet above our heads, perched a large, handsome bird with feathers of ruddy gold.

“A goshawk,” said Phoebe. Her voice wavered a little. “He flew away when you opened the door. I’ve been taming him. He is my only friend.”

Looking up again at the bird I said, “He’s beautiful.” I looked back at her. Her head tipped to one side, she studied me. “You do remember me, don’t you?” I asked.

She nodded and began to walk around the fire pit toward me. She looked like a ragged child with an old face. “Fremont. You’re not with them. Not one of them. Are you?”

“No, of course I’m not!” I wanted to run to her and take her in my arms, but I dared not. There was something feral in Phoebe now, and who could blame her for that?

Suddenly I knew how to gain her trust and ease her pain at the same time. I would tell her the very thing I myself had not yet come to terms with. “I killed him, Phoebe, I shot Pete Carlson. His blood is on my clothes—see? He can’t hurt you or frighten you anymore.”

She stood stock-still. “Pete. The short one, ugly and mean. What about the other one? He said he would get me out. Is that it, did the other one send you to let me go?”

“Braxton Furnival has gone away, or so I have been told. No one sent me—I came on my own. I took the keys to this tower out of Pete’s pocket after I shot him. I’ve been looking a long time for you—not just this morning, but ever since you disappeared. I’m so glad you’re all right!” Tentatively I took a couple of steps forward.

“Not Braxton,” she shook her head, “I don’t mean him. After they put me in here Braxton only came once. The other one is young, dark, handsome. He never told me his name but he said he would take me away, rescue
me, he promised!” Her voice rose to a high hysterical pitch and her eyes burned. Then she slumped and the light went out of her face. “But that was days ago, I don’t know how many; I keep count by making marks on the wall, but sometimes I can’t remember when I last made a mark—”

“You must mean Ramon,” I said hastily. “I haven’t seen him for some time either.” I held out my hands. “Please Phoebe, come with me now. I have a car outside. Let me take you home.”

With fragile dignity Phoebe came, lifting her bony little chin. “Home. To Carmel?” I nodded and she said matter-of-factly, “Yes. That would be good. I believe I am badly in need of a bath.”

Phoebe wandered through her house and out into her yard, touching things, and it seemed that with each one she touched, she came back more and more into reality. I had set up the old hip-bath she used for a tub in the kitchen, and while water heated on the stove I began to deal with some realities of my own.

I had killed a man. I had not meant to kill him, but I could not precisely say that I’d acted in self-defense either. As soon as I’d realized Pete Carlson was dead, I had pulled him out of the Maxwell and examined him. He’d worked one hand loose of the ropes that bound him, but I hadn’t known that when I fired the shot. The bullet had entered his left side and gone right through him, to lodge itself deep in the car’s leather upholstery. I had shot Pete Carlson through the heart. Then like a thief I had gone through his pockets, looking for the key to Phoebe’s tower.

I did find the key, but I hadn’t stopped there. Other things I did, almost without thought, on sheer instinct—the survival instinct, perhaps. Those other things could be undone, but not without difficulty, and I was not at all sure I wanted to undo them.

I decided to discuss the matter with Phoebe, who wandered in from her sculpture studio-cum-garden just as the
water on the stove began to steam. She was smiling through her grime.

“It’s really true,” she said, “I’m really home. This is my cottage. Those are my sculptures, I made them—with these hands.” She held up her hands and inspected them. “Gawd, are they filthy!”

Phoebe giggled. That giggle was like a ripple in a stream—it grew wider and wider until it encompassed me and I giggled, too, and then our giggles became laughter. We both laughed until we cried, only to laugh again until we were spent. In the midst of all this, somehow, Phoebe got her bath. It was the most hilarious bathing experience I have ever participated in, and I do believe it was good for both of us even if the whole thing was slightly hysterical.

So it was not until Phoebe had dressed and was brushing her hair dry that I told her exactly how I had shot Pete Carlson. “I’m afraid that isn’t all,” I said.

Brush upraised, from under a canopy of shining-clean hair she shot me one of her old savvy looks. Phoebe was recovering quickly. “Oh? You killed him. He was scum. What else could there be?”

“I covered my tracks. I can’t say why exactly; I just did it out of some sort of instinct. I unwrapped the rope Quincy and I had tied him with and put it in the Maxwell, in the back under the traveling rug. I left Pete’s body there on the side of the road. What is worst of all, I threw his gun—the one I killed him with—into the sea.”

Phoebe moved the brush in languid, rhythmic strokes through her hair. In an unconcerned tone she inquired, “Are you positive no one saw you do any of this?”