The Deader the Better (36 page)

I was still better than ten miles from the highway when I rounded
a bumpy left-hand corner and came upon a familiar sight. The
Studebaker was trying to back into a small turnout cut into the bank,
but didn’t have the power. As the truck lurched backward, a light
flickered: A small shower of sparks fell to the ground. I heard the
motor cough and then shut down, leaving the truck half in, half out
of the road. Whitey got out and pulled his cap from his head. He
slapped it against his leg and then jammed it back on. I pulled the
Malibu to a stop behind the truck and got out.

He did a double-take. “What the hell are you doin’ up here?”
he asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

He stood with his hands on his hips, his body language telling me
to make it good, but I wasn’t in the mood to admit having been on a
snipe hunt, so I changed the subject.

“You having that same problem where the battery won’t stay
charged?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I saw it,” I said. “When you backed up.”

“Saw what?”

“Your short.”

I walked over to the back of the truck. “Right here,” I said,
pointing to a recess in the rear bumper.

“That’s the old backup lights. They don’t work. Not even
wired.”

“This one does. It was flickering the whole time you were trying
to back the truck into the turnout. I thought I might have even seen
a couple of sparks.”

Whitey lay down in the road and scooted under the truck. I heard
him sputter as mud dropped to the pavement. I listened as he poked
around.

“Well, goddamn,” I heard him mutter. “Hey, ah…”

“Leo,” I said.

“Yeah, Leo…in the bed in the toolbox…would you give me the
dykes with the red handles and that roll of electrical tape?”

Two minutes later, he snaked out from under the truck and brushed
himself off. “I checked the taillight about twenty times,” he
said. “No idea that little light was still wired. Must run under
the bed somewhere.”

“Before we start congratulating ourselves, let’s see if it
works,” I said.

Together, we put our backs on the tailgate and pushed the truck up
the little rise, until it sat at the top of an incline. He hopped in.
“We’ll see soon enough,” he said. The truck began to roll
downhill. I heard him pop the clutch and the hiss as the tires slid
in the loose rock and then the smooth purr of the exhaust.

I walked back to the Malibu and headed down the hill after him.
Twenty minutes later, he was waiting for me at the highway junction.
He got out. So did I.

“It’s charging like hell,” he said. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, “but do me a favor will you? Next time
somebody tells you to run down and set somebody’s house on fire,
you tell ’em to go to hell. Okay?” His natural inclination was to
go with his stupid act. He looked down at his boots, kicked a stone
with his toe and then suddenly pulled off his glasses.

He pinned me with his white eyes. “I poured it mostly on the
ground,” he said.

“I know.”

He replaced the shades, pulled himself up to his full height and
took a couple of steps back in my direction. “I’m not about
burnin’ up anybody’s babies,” he said in a tone of voice that
invited me to challenge the statement if I dared. Fortunately, there
was no need.

“I know you’re not,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t
have gone back after the others were gone and put out the fire.”

Above the sunglasses, his head wrinkled like a washboard.

“How…” he started. “I never told a single…”

“It’s the only thing makes sense,” I said. “If it wasn’t
the Springers who grabbed the extinguisher and put out the flames,
then, strange as it seems, it must have been one of the shooters.
Anything else requires either one hell of a coincidence or direct
alien intervention.”

He smiled. “My mama’d vote for the aliens.” I wondered if
she knew Monty.

I gave him the thumbs up and stood and watched as he pulled out
onto the highway and the sound of the truck faded to nothing.

I got in and followed Whitey back toward town, feeling a tad
better at having solved the mystery of the reluctant arsonist. That
probably explains why I pulled into Linc’s Texaco station when I
still had half a tank. He came skittering out of the station, wiping
his hands. I stepped out of the car.

“Fill ’er up,” I said. “And let’s you and me finish that
discussion we started a while back about where it was Mr. Springer
got that unleaded gasoline from. Except now we know he didn’t buy
it himself…so…”

The last part was wasted. He ran with long strides, his bottom low
to the ground. Slammed the station door. I took this to mean the gas
was self-service, filled her up, and then went looking for Linc, who
seemed to have a disturbing propensity to come up missing at pivotal
moments. No Linc. Both the station and the office behind were empty.
Gas was eight-eighty. Much as it pained me to leave him a tip, I put
a ten on top of the pump and weighed it down with a small rock.

They sent the first team. No rookies, no would-be pensioners.
Three cars. Six burly state policemen in body armor. The engine roar
pulled my head up. The first cruiser slid to a stop about ten feet in
front of me. In a heartbeat, the officers were crouched behind the
doors, squinting down sights at me. “On the ground.”

I put my hands over my head and dropped to my knees. A hand
grabbed the back of my neck, pushing my face into the ground; a pair
of knees landed in the middle of my back, driving the air from my
lungs, leaving me gasping and shaking my head for breath.

“Leo Waterman, you are being arrested and charged with the
murder of Emmett Polster. Anything you say can and will be used
against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. In
the event that you are unable to afford an attorney, one will…”

They didn’t mess around. They rolled me over, right then and
there, all six of them put me in a waist chain and shackle apparatus.
I rode the fifty miles to Port Townsend bent nearly double, the
handcuffs on my wrists attached to an eyebolt in the floor of the
cruiser. I concentrated on my breathing. Counting in and out and
trying to sink inside my skin, until the metal on my flesh stopped
burning.

I WAS ON SUICIDE WATCH. THEY CAME BY EVERY FIF-teen minutes to
make sure that I hadn’t decided to cash my chips. Orange paper
jumpsuit. White paper slippers. They’d lengthened my wrist chains
so I could shrug myself in and out of the jumpsuit, but not enough so
I could wipe my ass. They said I’d get over it.

Jed came at nine-fifteen that night. I heard him before I saw him.
“This isn’t a hospital, Trooper…what is it?…Franklin. There’s
no visiting hours for an attorney to see his client.” A door
clanged. The voice was getting nearer.

“You must be accustomed to nursing homes…what? How many years
have you to go until retirement anyway?” He stopped in front of my
cell. The turnkey was fifty or so, working his way toward
pear-shaped. First cop I’d seen all night who didn’t look like an
NFL linebacker. Jed waved a hand at the door. “Well…come on…open
it up.”

“No sir,” the cop deadpanned. “He’s on suicide watch.”

“A client of mine? On suicide watch? Are you crazy? It’s your
local prosecutor you should be keeping an eye on.”

“I’ve got my orders.”

Before they could start a full squabble, I said, “Paper and
pencil, please.”

Jed picked right up on it, reaching in his suit coat pocket and
coming out with an eelskin notepad and a black Monte Blanc fountain
pen. I wrote:
#1 We need an absolutelysecureplace to talk. #2
Call this number. Find out what’s goingon. #3 Tell whoever answers
that we’re going nuclear
. I handed both items back to Jed.
His face remained impassive as he tucked them back into his coat.

It took an hour and a half. They had to get Billy Heffernen out of
bed. He wasn’t amused. What Captain William Heffernen
was
was a hard-ass cop. Fair but completely by the book. If you were
looking for sympathy, you better look in the dictionary. Before going
out to duel with Jed, he stopped by my cell. He wore his trooper’s
hat with the strap tight across the very point of his chin, like a
Paris Island drill sergeant. He walked to the bars. I stood up and
went over to meet him. “Well?” His eyes were trying to bore a
hole in the back of my head. I held his gaze. “I didn’t kill
anybody,” I said.

“For Rebecca’s sake, I hope not.”

“You give me a little help, and maybe I can help you put this to
bed.”

His eyes never wavered. “If you wish to make a statement, I’ll
send for a stenographer.”

I ignored him. “I need to know what Sheriff Hand did before he
became sheriff. And I need the driving record of a guy named Ben
Bendixon.” I spelled it.

Billy Heffernen snorted once and marched off down the corridor.

At five to eleven, a pair of uniformed Blutos marched me down the
hall to Billy’s office. Seems Jed had refused the interrogation
rooms, and the only other private space was the state police
captain’s office. They left me standing five feet inside the door,
then turned and left. Jed beckoned me over.

“I called that number and delivered your message.”

“What’s going on?”

“The state cops threw everybody off the property. Ran warrant
checks on everybody and of course Ralph and Harold had outstandings.
Failure to appear on a failure to ap pear. Drunk and disorderly. The
usual.” He waved a hand.

“They’re already on their way back to King County. I called
Evergreen Bonds to bail them out in the morning.”

“What about—”

“Everybody else is over at the Twilight Zone, whatever that
means. He said to tell you that Narva was running her number as we
spoke and it was a sight to behold. Also that they caught a few more
things you just had to see. They’re holding tight.”

“What—” I started.

“No,” he said. “It’s my turn. Let’s talk murder.”

“What have they got?”

“It’s what
you’ve
got, and it’s problems,” he
said.

“Such as?”

“Such as about forty eyewitnesses who say you threatened and
chased the deceased a couple of days ago.”

“Sad but true.” I told him the story. “What else?”

“Such as a .-caliber police special revolver, registered to you,
found in a drainage ditch a block down from the decedent’s house.
Seems the attacker used the gun to bludgeon the decedent and the
weapon shows traces of blood. They’re running tests on both the
blood and the gun as we speak.”

“Not good,” I said.

“Talk to me,” he said.

I did. How last time I actually saw the . was the night I offered
it to Narva, before we went into Spooner’s house to fetch Misty
McMahon. How I’d put it back in the gym bag, which I last saw on
the night Rebecca and I went over the cliff. I clearly remember
reaching down for the shirt to bandage her arm and seeing the bag in
the rubble. His turn to say, “Not good.” He leaned in close. “And
what’s all this about a secure place to talk? We could have been
doing this an hour ago.”

I checked the walls and ceiling. Over the past couple of days, I’d
noticed an interesting phenomenon developing. Themore time I spent
clandestinely watching people who had no idea their privacy had been
compromised, the more paranoid I was becoming. Something karmic, I
supposed. I lowered my voice. “I guess I’m getting a little
paranoid about…you know…electronic eavesdropping.”

He leaned closer. I put my mouth about an inch from his ear and,
without naming names, told him everything. As I spoke, his mouth
opened like a drawbridge.

“You’ve got all this on tape?”

I nodded.

“Audio or video?”

“Both.”

“Are these devices still operational and in place?”

“Oh yeah.”

His lips curled into something between a sneer and a smile.

“No way it’s admissible evidence. Not now. Not ever.”

“I know.”

“As a last resort, though,” he began, “as trading material—”

I interrupted him. “It’s not the last resort,” I said. “I
might have an alibi.”

“For two-forty-eight this afternoon?”

He read my surprise. “Stevens Falls police got a call about
shots fired. Exactly two-forty-eight.” I wasn’t surprised. It
made sense.

“Yeah. For exactly that time.”

“Tell me.”

I did. He was incredulous. “Why in hell didn’t you tell the
cops?”

“Because what they’d do is call out to Stevens Falls, send
Nathan Hand out to bring him in for them, which I’m pretty much
willing to guarantee wasn’t going to get my ass out of here anytime
soon.”

“So…then the sheriff’s a question as far as you’re
concerned.”

“No question. The sheriff’s a player. Got pictures of that,
too.”

“But you’re not sure whether your alibi will come through for
you.”

“He’s a local. Part of the same group we’ve tangled with a
couple of times. I figure it’s a crapshoot. He may and he may not.”

“And if not?”

“Then people in high places are going to start getting anonymous
videotapes in the mail, and you’re going to be defending me on a
whole raft of other charges.”

Nine o’clock the next morning. French toast and scrambled eggs,
my ass. The oiled cow flops and the puddle of yellow bile were right
where the turnkey had left them at seven-thirty. A pair of necks I
hadn’t seen before came waddling down the corridor, opened the cell
door and handed me a white plastic bag filled with my civilian
clothes. Took me by the elbows and levitated me down the hall and
around the corner to the showers, then deposited me back in my cell
and disappeared. Ten-fifteen. The same pair left me unfettered as
they escorted me up to the third floor. A lineup. Me and five bruiser
cops standing cheek by jowl beneath the bright lights. Jed went
postal. Either they had to give up their belts and shoelaces or I had
to get mine back. Not only that but he demanded a couple of suspects
who, as he put it, “don’t look like the state’s paying them to
take steroids.”