Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (21 page)

We reached Deck’s low wall and stopped beside it. It was close to six by now; the light was fading fast down here in the wash;
soon Westerkamp would have to abandon the search or bring in artificial illumination.

He folded his arms across his chest, looking at the bottle house. “What d’you suppose ever possessed him?”

“Deck? To build this house? Well, one of the things he told me is that the bottles let the light in but keep everything else
out by warping and distorting it. I suppose by ‘everything else’ he could have meant evil.”

“Evil spirits?” The deputy looked skeptical.

“Maybe. He’s an ex-addict and probably paranoid. His fears don’t have to be rational.”

“Whose do? Me, I’m deathly afraid of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. All I’ve got to do is see a jar
of Skippy and my palms start to sweat. Go figure.”

“I used to be afraid of birds.”

“How’d you get over it?”

“It just went away of its own accord.” I propped one knee on the low wall, stared over it at the strange stone-and-bottle
sculptures.

Westerkamp said, “You know, it strikes me as stupid of Brenda to take off that way. I mean, what could Deck really tell anybody?
Who would believe him?”

“She panicked. There must’ve been something in the photos that I took out here that made her think I knew more than I really
did.” I thought back to the shots I’d snapped: two as I came along the wash, another one of that sculpture—

Damn!

“Deputy,” I said then, “I think I know where the grave is.”

* * *

The bottles glittered in the headlights of the two off-road vehicles that Westerkamp had had his men drive into the wash and
position so their high beams focused on the sculpture. Static and occasional voices crackled from the radios—“I didn’t copy
that. …” “Sorry, eleven-four-four, what’s your ETA for Tonopah?” Westerkamp and I leaned against his Jeep, watching the deputies
pry the glass and stone apart with pickaxes. By the time they began digging up the ground underneath, it was full dark. By
the time they uncovered the remains, the moon rode high.

One of the deputies climbed out of the hole and signaled to Westerkamp. “Wait here,” he told me and went over there. He stood
looking down into the grave for a moment, then came back, his face somber. “He’s down there, all right, what’s left of him.
Must’ve been buried shallow at first, because it sure looks like the coyotes got to him.” He reached into the Jeep and radioed
in for the county medical examiner and crime-lab personnel, then—almost as an afterthought—put out a pickup order on Walker
and Deck.

When he finished, I asked, “How long will it take your people to get here?”

“Half hour.”

“You need me any longer?”

“For a statement later. Maybe by then we’ll know who he is. Why?”

“I need to go back to my hotel and call my office.”

“And your client?”

I shook my head. “I doubt I could reach him, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. I realize you have to talk with him first.”

Westerkamp studied my face, nodded. “Okay, go make your call. Come out to the substation when you’re done. And Ms. McCone?
Don’t talk to anybody in town about this. Word’ll get out soon enough—there’re an awful lot of scanners in trucks and homes
around here—and I don’t want more of a crowd than we can handle.”

* * *

Back at the hotel, I reviewed my options, made a quick decision, and placed a credit-card call to my house. The machine answered.
I left a message for Mick, then dialed my office number. Was surprised when my nephew’s voice said, “McCone Investigations.”

“Why’re you there so late?”

“Shar, where are you? I tried calling Hy’s, but nobody was home.”

“I’m in Nevada. Why’re you still at the office?”

“I’m working on something. Are you in Lost Hope?”

“Yes. What’re you working on?”

“The Blessing trace.”

“I thought I told you to give up on it.”

“You did, but things’ve been slow here and I got bored, so I started tinkering. And I’ve got something. Yesterday afternoon
I borrowed Rae’s car and drove down to Pacifica. You know that old van the Blessings ditched in their yard?”

“What about it?”

“Well, they took the plates off it, but I copied down the VIN, just in case the registration was current. Ran it by the DMV,
and they gave me a name.”

“A name’s all they’re allowed to give out, and it’s not much to go on.”

“This one was: Enid Tomchuck. Unusual. So I started thinking, what if this Enid Tomchuck was Sid Blessing’s wife? I called
that neighbor lady you talked to back in August, and she said, yes, Mrs. Blessing’s first name was Enid. Now, last summer
when you asked me to try to trace those people, I ran a Dataquick statewide real-estate search and came up with nothing. But
I couldn’t get out of my head what the neighbor woman told you about the family coming into some money. I mean, what’s the
first thing most people do when that happens? They buy a house. But if they got the money illegally, they’re not going to
want to call attention to themselves, are they? So I ran another search, on Enid this time, and found out she bought a house
in Modesto on August fifth.”

Right around the time the harassment of Suits began, and a few weeks before Moonshine House blew up. Had the money Sid Blessing
came into been a down payment on those acts?

Mick went on, “There wasn’t any phone number on the property detail, and when I called Information they said it was unlisted.
But I ran Tomchuck’s name through Mortgage Leads and got it. Then I called and asked for Sid.”

“And?”

“He’s dead. Got killed by a hit-and-run driver on September tenth.”

Two weeks after the explosion. “Where?”

“In Modesto. You know how those fast-growing valley towns are? One minute you’re in tracts, the next you’re in an orchard?
Well, Blessing was found by a construction crew that was framing in some houses in this half-built tract at the edge of town.
Very isolated place. He was … kind of squashed in the street. The autopsy showed he was run over late the night before.”

“Mick, you seem to know a lot about the accident.”

Silence.

“Mick?”

“Okay, I borrowed Rae’s car again this morning and drove out there. The wife wouldn’t talk to me, but I got some information
from the cops who’re assigned to the case.”

“You’re not licensed to—”

“I didn’t represent myself as a licensed P.I. But the cops were impressed that I’m working under your license; the one in
charge had read that newspaper story about you opening the agency.”

“How did you convince them you were working for me?”

“… Well, last week, you know? I, um, took the liberty of having some business cards printed up.”

“McCone Investigations cards with
your
name on them?”

“Uh, right.”

“Who paid for them?”

“… McCone Investigations. But listen to this, Shar!”

“I’m all ears,” I said sarcastically.

He ignored my tone. “I gave the cops a story about working a missing-heir case and needing to get in touch with Blessing’s
wife. And while the one was looking up the phone number in the file, I sneaked a glance at it and got Sid’s Social Security
number.”

“Mick, do not use that number to request anything we can’t legally access!”

Silence again.

“And just forget what it says in
The Hacker’s Handbook
.”

When he spoke, his voice was pained. “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”

Curiosity got the better of me. “All right, what’s the rest?”

“Through various means, I found out that Sid was once in the service. Army.”

“Various means?”

“Mostly legal.”

“Mostly?”

“Mostly.”

I sighed. “Okay, what’s done is done. Send a Form One-eighty to the National Personnel Records Center—”

“I already faxed it.”

“Good work.”

“Does this mean you’re not too pissed at me?”

I hesitated, not wanting to send the wrong message. But he
had
done good work, mostly legal means or not. “I’m not
too
pissed at you. But, Mick, don’t make any more unauthorized expenditures like the business cards, or I’ll have to dock your
pay.”

“My pay? All I’m getting is room and board!”

“As of today you’re on salary. Until I can hire a real assistant.”

I hung up on his surprised exclamation, checked the directory listings for airlines, and called to find out about flights
east from Las Vegas. Then I dialed Noah Romanchek’s number. The attorney told me that as far as he knew, Suits was still at
Moonshine Cottage.

“We’re about to pack it in at GGL and turn the operation back to Kirk Cameron,” he added. “No point in going on without T.J.
Carole Lattimer was released from the hospital and went back to Chicago last night.”

“How is she?”

“Fair. The surgery was a success, and psychologically she feels somewhat better now that the man who mugged her is behind
bars.”

“When did they pick him up? Who is he?”

“Oakland P.D. picked him up on an unrelated charge yesterday. He’s a maintenance worker at one of the buildings near the Convention
Center. Confessed to a series of muggings in the area, and insists he’s never heard of T.J. Gordon or Golden Gate Lines. As
far as anyone can tell, it’s the truth.”

“Random violence, then. Does T.J. know about this?”

“Not yet.”

“He should.”

“I’m not sure he’d care. And frankly I’ve given up on trying to get through to him.”

“Noah, would you try one more time? I would, but I’m out of town right now. I’ll need to talk with him when I get back, though,
and some other people want to contact him as well. Will you go up to Bootlegger’s Cove and ask him to come back to San Francisco?”

“It sounds important.”

“It is.”

Romanchek waited for me to elaborate. When he realized I wasn’t going to, he said, “All right, I’ll get hold of Josh and fly
up tomorrow.”

“Thanks. By the way, how’s Josh doing?” I recalled the pilot’s tears and anger at the ruins of Moonshine House when he’d ferried
me to the cove, and his withdrawn silence on the trip back.

“Not very well. He was fond of Anna, of course, and her death hit him hard. He’s camped out in T.J.’s condo at Bay Vista—the
company okayed it, since his lease was up at the beginning of September on the place where he was living, and given the uncertainty
of the situation, he didn’t want to renegotiate it. But without Suits, Josh has got nothing to do, just rattles around there
and makes an occasional run over to North Field to check on the aircraft.”

“Then maybe it’ll do him good to take you up to the cove.”

“Maybe.” Romanchek didn’t sound too sanguine.

I said good-bye to the attorney, packed, checked out of the hotel, and headed for the sheriff’s substation.

* * *

No identification had been found with the August man’s remains, and Westerkamp was prematurely discouraged. He would, he told
me, query Monora, Pennsylvania, as well as surrounding jurisdictions for reports of missing persons; if any seemed probable
matches, they’d try to get an I.D. through dental charts. But that was a long shot, and the deputy knew it. His investigation
was stalled until he could send someone to question Suits and his associates.

I made my statement and gave him the information on Suits’s whereabouts, hoping Romanchek would be able to bring our mutual
client back to the city, where he could monitor the official questioning. Then I said, “You know, if I were to go to Monora,
I might be able to help you.”

Westerkamp smiled cynically. “More historical research?”

“Well, look what I turned up here.”

“Yeah, a case that’s probably going to plague me in my declining years.”

“Not necessarily. And you’ve got to admit, it’d be a lot more cost-effective for you if I went there on my client’s money
than if you had to send somebody or go yourself.”

He shrugged. “You want to make the trip, I’m not gonna stop you.” Then he scribbled on a scratch pad and passed the sheet
across his desk to me. “That’s the name of Monora’s chief of police. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

I glanced at the paper. The chief was a woman, Nancy Koll. “Thanks.”

“No, I thank you. Heading out now?”

“If I hurry, I can catch a red-eye east from Vegas.”

“Well, Godspeed.”

For a long time as I drove south across the dark desert I could see the lights of Lost Hope in my rearview mirror.

* * *

I just made the last red-eye to Chicago. It would put me into O’Hare with forty minutes to spare before my connection to Pittsburgh.
The flight was nearly empty; after we reached cruising altitude, I pulled a blanket and pillow from the overhead bin, raised
the armrests of the adjacent seats, and curled up to sleep.

For about an hour I dozed, but then I came wide awake. After shifting around for a while, trying to get comfortable, I sat
up again, propped the pillow between my head and the window, and willed the plane’s vibrations to lull me. Finally I accepted
the fact that I wasn’t going to sleep any more and sat up straight. Stared fixedly at the black window and thought of Hy.
By now he’d finished with his business in San Diego, might even be flying east himself. Briefly I fantasized about running
into him at O’Hare, then pushed the thought from my mind. I’d never had that much luck.

At a little after eight in the morning I’d arrive in Chicago. Another time change, and I’d land in Pittsburgh before noon.
Grab a rental car and a map, get some breakfast, and plan my route. Sleep for a few hours in a motel near the airport. And
then I’d be off to Monora, down on the Monongahela River, halfway to the West Virginia line.

With every air mile, I was closer to learning the identity of Anna’s killer. My would-be killer. He wasn’t in Pennsylvania,
though; I’d have to return to California to bring him down. But even as the distance between us lengthened, I was beginning
to sense the outlines of his persona.