Witch House (37 page)

“Suppose he thought it was traceable?”

“All right then, why did everyone think
Johnny Buck died in the cabin fire?”

“Because that is what everyone believed. You
don’t go looking for the answer when you think you already have
it.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I am suggesting that René and Johnny Buck
had a plan to split up after the robbery and to get together again
up at the cabin later. In the meantime, on the night before John
Davis’ funeral, Landau slipped into the funeral home, removed
Davis’ body and placed the money in the casket. See, he knew that
Johnny Buck shot Davis in the face and that he would have to have a
closed-casket funeral, so the money was safe.”

“I like it,” I said. “It sounds plausible. Go
on.”

“Careful, it’s hot.” Our server moved in and
set Spinelli’s soup bowl down on the table in front of him. Carlos
shot me a sly glance, his brow twitching covertly so that I might
not miss the excitement. “I’ll have your sandwiches and fries out
in minute guys.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Oh, and can you tell me if
Trish is working this afternoon?”

“Trish?”

“Trish Rosado?”

“Oh, Pat. Yeah, she has the dinner shift.
She’ll be here in about an hour.”

I thanked her again and then waited for her
to leave before pressing Carlos further. I must admit, he had
thought this thing all the way through. There were few holes in his
theory, and even fewer reasons to poke at them, as I really wanted
to make some sense of the case.

“Okay,” he said. “Where was I? Oh yeah, René
stashes the money in the coffin and then takes Davis’ body up to
the cabin with intentions of torching the place with the body
inside. His hope is that everyone will find the charred remains and
think they are his and that all the money burned up with him.”

“But there was a problem,” I said.

“Yes, there
was
a problem. René
torched the place, but before he could escape, Powell showed up.
Naturally, he could not tell Powell that the body inside was
Davis’. That would be a give-away to the money’s real location, and
so he told Powell the body was Johnny Buck’s. He gives Powell this
story about Johnny knocking over a lantern or whatever, setting the
place ablaze with the money inside. What’s Powell to do? He checks
Landau’s car for the money. It’s not there. It’s not buried
somewhere about the cabin, so case solved.”

“Right, and when Johnny Buck heard that the
cops thought his was the body they found charred, he was all too
happy to lay low and let them think it.”

Spinelli asked, “Why didn’t Johnny Buck put
one and one together? Knowing they weren’t his remains in the
cabin, he had to figure they were Davis’.”

“Because, he’s not that bright,” said Carlos.
“Remember?”

“Yes, but he was bright enough to believe
that the money was still out there somewhere.”

“Excuse me.” Our server returned. “Burger,
well done, onion rings?”

I raised my hand. “That’s mine.”

“Burger medium with fries?”

“Mine,” said Carlos.

“Club?”

Spinelli, “Here.”

“Grilled cheese?”

Carlos, “Mine.”

“More onion rings?”

Again Carlos, “Here.”

“Extra fries?”

“Yup.”

“A side of pickles?”

“Put `em here.”

“Chips, coleslaw, potato salad?”

“Here, here and here.”

“Carlos!” I moved my glass and plate aside to
give her more room. “You can’t be that hungry.”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“What, so you are going to eat enough to
hibernate for the winter?”

He laughed. “Hibernate, that’s funny.”

“Hey!” We both looked at Spinelli. Someone
had bumped our table, causing his soup to spill on the tablecloth
and onto his lap. “Did you see that?”

Carlos looked at me and smiled. I do not know
why it is that the little things in life bring him such great
joy.

We spent the next twenty minutes eating,
talking about our food and guarding against more soup and soda
spills. Eventually our conversation cycled back to the case. “So,
Tony,” this from Carlos, while chomping on a pickle spear. “I get
the sense that you don’t totally buy this Johnny Buck thing.”

“Me? Oh, I don’t know. Your theory does tidy
things up a bit.”

“Yeah, but I can tell. You’re not buying it.
Why?”

I patted my mouth clean and tossed the napkin
onto my plate. “It’s too tidy,” I said. “If we did not have so many
other suspects to consider, I might feel better about it.”

“What suspects? All we have is a
dysfunctional group of cohorts who knew Landau and who wanted to
get their hands on a ton of money that they knew he stashed
somewhere. We have nothing concrete to suggest that any of them
killed the man.”

“For that matter,” said Spinelli, “we have
nothing concrete on Johnny Buck either. At least we know our other
suspects are alive.”

“Oh, I see.” Carlos pointed a floppy pickle
at Spinelli. “As soon as Tony says he has reservations about the
Johnny Buck theory, then you shoot me down, too.”

“I’m not shooting you down.”

“You’re not supporting me.”

“I am supporting you! I’m supporting all the
working theories.”

“You can’t support them all.”

“I can till we figure out which one is the
right one.”

“Then why are you shooting me down?”

“I’m not—”

“No one is shooting you down, Carlos.” I
reached across the table and snatched up the check. “I like your
Johnny Buck theory; Dominic likes your Johnny Buck theory. I just
think we need to keep all scenarios open awhile longer until we
fill in a few more holes.”

“Then we need a bigger shovel,” Carlos
complained, “because unless something gives here, we are going to
end up with more holes, not less.”

“What did you say?”

“I said we need a bigger shovel,
because—”

“Yes, yes, I know that. Listen, I think you
may have something there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think we have been working this
thing all wrong. We started from the end and have been working our
way back.”

Spinelli said, “That’s the way you’re
supposed to work a murder case. You start with a body, work back
through a timeline to check out where he’s been, who he’s talked to
and pick up the pieces as you go.”

“Then we have not gone back far enough.” I
pulled out my wallet, tossed forty bucks down on the table and said
to Carlos, “Do you still carry a shovel in your trunk?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said, molding a look
of confusion. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s take a ride.
There is something we should have checked out long ago.”

Spinelli asked, “Am I going with you?”

“No. I want you to stay here in case my
theory pans out. I might need you to do something for me.”

“What’s your theory?”

I shook my head. “I’d rather not say now.
Come on. Finish up. Time is wasting.”

After dropping Spinelli off at the Justice
Center, Carlos and I headed out to the country to where it all
began. The cabin Landau owned sat on a three-acre site, eighty feet
of it stretching along the banks of Quicksilver Lake. It is my
guess that that is where Landau and Johnny Buck planned the armored
car robbery, maybe with the help of Sergeant Powell or Chief
Running Bear, or both. I had seen pictures of the place; Spinelli
made sure of that. Being there, however, gave me a sense of
spiritual connection with Landau that pictures could not convey. I
could almost feel his presence watching over us, guiding us, as we
walked about the cabin ruins.

Outside the charred walls, broken booze
bottles and crushed beer cans carpeted the blackened campfire pits
left behind by treasure hunters who had come before. Standing in
just one place by the cabin steps, Carlos and I counted no less
than twenty holes in the ground, some dug as deep as graves,
testament to the lure of folklore promising riches beyond one’s
wildest dreams.

We walked around the back where a downhill
trail led to the lake. There, a rotting dock stretching some twelve
feet into the water leaned precariously on its pilings. I looked up
at the clouds. Rain threatened, but behaved for the moment. I said
to Carlos, “Our answer is here. I can feel it.”

His brow hooked. “What’s the question?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the
letter that Adam Landau let me take from the desk at his house.
“Remember this?”

Carlos craned slightly to see it. “Is that
one of René’s letters to Adam?”

“Yup. I was looking at this thing earlier and
it got me thinking. Do me a favor. Does your phone have GPS?”

“Yes.”

“Punch in these coordinates: 4240.21 North by
7057.06 West. What do you have?”

He pointed to a spot out on the lake. “It’s
out there somewhere, almost in the middle.”

“Yeah, that is what I found when I punched in
those same coordinates the night before. Only, the funny thing is,
that is not what Landau wrote down in this letter.”

“It’s not?”

“No, he wrote down the seconds of the first
coordinates as .12 not .21. When I first did it, I got a reading
that wasn’t even in the lake.”

“Well, we know he was dyslexic. Maybe he
meant to write down .21.”

“I know, which is why I switched the numbers
around myself. When I saw that changing the 12 to 21 put the
coordinates out in the lake, I decided that must have been what he
meant to write.”

“But now you don’t think so?”

“I don’t know. That is what we are here to
find out. Go ahead and change the latitude from 4240.21 to 4240.12
and see what we have.”

He did, and when the reading came up, he
pointed into the woods down off the main trail. “Like you said,
it’s out there.”

I tapped him on the arm and told him to
follow me. We stopped off at the car, grabbed the shovel from the
trunk and then started into the woods. About three hundred feet in,
away from any foot trails or obvious paths, Carlos called out for
me to stop. “This is it. You’re standing within a half meter of the
exact coordinates.”

I surveyed the area, trying to imagine where
I might bury something if I were looking to do so. It had been
nearly eighteen years since Landau had been there. Trees, which
maybe did not exist back then, could be growing now on the spot
where he once stood. I tapped the ground a few times with the
shovel and found rock. A few more taps produced soft turf. I
started digging. Barely a foot down, my shovel tip struck something
solid. I tossed the shovel aside, got down on knees and began
moving dirt away with my hands. Before I knew it, I had exposed a
human skull, its malposed anteriors locked in a perpetual
sneer.

“What is it?” asked Carlos, unable to see, as
I hunched over my find. I looked back over my shoulder and smiled
up at him.

“Carlos,” I leaned away enough for him to
take a gander, “meet Johnny Buck Allis.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll be.” He reached his hand out to
help me up. “I guess that was Johnny Buck’s ghost at the séances
after all.”

“I guess,” I said, and clapped my hands
clean.

“So, Landau was not dyslexic after all?”

“No, he was. He just wasn’t dyslexic about
this. I think he wanted to make sure that someone found his Johnny
Buck. Maybe he figured he’d be long gone by the time we read his
letters.”

“Well, he was right about that, but why did
he wanted someone to find him?”

“Friendship,” I said. “It’s a powerful
thing.”

“Yeah? I hope I pick my friends better than
that.”

“Me too.” I patted him on the shoulder with
my dirty hand. “Look, do you still have the phone number we found
on Landau?”

“The one on the napkin from Pete’s
Place?”

“Yes.”

“Sure.”

“Let me see it.”

“Tony, we tried that number already. It rings
the movie house.”

“I know; that’s why I’m not going to call it.
I’m going to invert the last two digits.”

“Oh, I get it.” He opened his notepad and
read the number aloud. I took out my phone and made the call. On
the second ring, a young woman answered. I hung up immediately.

“I was right,” I said.

“`Bout what?”

“Do you remember the initials Landau wrote
down alongside the number on that napkin?”

He checked his notepad again. “Yeah, he wrote
PTA. What’s that, Parents Teachers Association?”

I laughed. “Hardly. Think about it, and
remember Landau was dyslexic.”

He thought about it a second, and his face
lit up when it came to him. “PTA is really PAT. Patricia! It was
Trish Rosado that met him at Pete’s Place, wasn’t it?”

“I’m sure of it. She fits Pete’s description:
young, blond, ass like a snare drum.” I dialed the phone again.

“Now who are you calling?”

I shushed him. “Hello, Dominic? Listen, I
need you to go down to the Perc and pick up Trish Rosado. She
should be there working now. As soon as you get her in custody, I
want you to text Adam using her phone. Text the message,
found
money at cabin. Come quickly
. You got it? Good.”

I hung up, and again Carlos was smiling like
the cat that got the canary. “You think Adam killed his own
father?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see what
happens when he gets here.”

The thickening skies that had behaved
themselves so well were beginning to sprinkle on us by the time
Adam Landau showed up. I purposely kept my back to him as he
approached, pretending I did not hear him coming. It could have
been a huge mistake and maybe cost me dearly, but I wanted him to
think he had the upper hand. I was leaning on my shovel, looking
down into one of the larger holes around the cabin, when I heard
it: the distinctive mechanized clicking sound a revolver makes when
one draws back the hammer. I dropped the shovel, turned slowly and
took a single step forward.