“Tell him I’ve got the paperwork that’s been costing him so much. And do it code-three. I want him here now.”
“You got it.”
Sammie gestured to me from the kitchen. She was holding the receiver of a wall phone in one hand. “I’ve got Harrowsmith,” she mouthed soundlessly.
I took the phone and began talking. Harrowsmith, for all his intimidating ways, was a cop’s judge. His demeanor, helped by the enormous hawk nose and bushy eyebrows, imparted a fierceness he was well capable of demonstrating, but it was only provoked by sloppiness. It was his desire to see the bad guys in jail that stimulated him to be tough on us, for he knew that if the case was lost in court, or never got there to begin with, it was usually because we’d screwed up our homework.
Twenty minutes later I’d made my case and had received his official sanction. He’d made it clear, however, that to really make him happy, we should make every effort to locate the only item that did appear in the written warrant: the ever-elusive curare.
I saw flashing lights draw up to the house through the open front door. As I walked through the house to greet my reluctant visitor, Tyler’s voice drifted up the basement stairs. “We’re off the hook; I just found a couple of the bottles, plus I’m pretty sure the dirt down here will match the samples I got off Jardine’s shoes.”
I poked my head through the door. “Great; what was the vet’s count on the total missing?”
“Four.”
“Okay, assuming one was used on Jardine, that leaves one more to find.”
Tyler, the wind strong in his sails, sounded optimistic. “We got a couple of rooms left to go.”
My own good mood was further enhanced as I stepped outside. The air was cooling down rapidly, bringing with it the return of the grouchy, brittle, northern weather we knew so well. I took the first deep breath I’d allowed myself in over a week.
Capullo nodded to me as I approached the car. “I told him to sit tight; figured you two would enjoy the privacy.”
“Thanks.”
Luman Jackson was sitting bolt upright in the rear of the patrol car. He glared at me as I entered and settled down next to him. “What the hell do you mean by rousting me in the middle of the night and having me dragged over here with some nonsensical threat note?”
“If it was nonsensical you wouldn’t be here,” I said flatly. “You came of your own free will. Look, we have two ways of doing this: We can either chat here and now, and get everything out in the open so we can do our best to save your butt on the murder charge, or you can pretend to be outraged and above it all and watch James Dunn turn you into a roman candle, with Stanley Katz lighting the fuse.”
“You
are
threatening me,” he said in a shocked voice.
I remembered the name I’d read in Buddy’s private document collection. “Who was Cheryl Jacobson?”
He didn’t actually stiffen, but I felt as if he’d suddenly turned to cement.
I waited and finally put my hand on the door handle.
“She was a student of mine.” His voice was a monotone.
I arrested my faked exit. “When?”
“Many years ago.”
I remembered the scuttlebutt I’d heard from Ron at our meeting at the Quality Inn. “You got her in trouble?”
He nodded.
“And you were being blackmailed.”
Again, he nodded.
“You know by who?”
He sighed. “I thought I did.”
My mind flashed back to last night, his pistol instinctively aimed at Pierre Lavoie’s chest. “Fred McDermott?” I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“Yes.”
“Why him?”
“Recently, we talked a couple of times on the phone. He disguised his voice, but there were certain mannerisms, turns of phrase I’d heard before. It didn’t click until I heard you were sniffing around McDermott, that he’d been at the murder scene on Horton Place. Then I knew who it was…”
“How long ago did this start?”
“Over a year.”
“You said you spoke on the phone recently. How were communications handled before?”
“By letter, always.”
Of course, I thought. Buddy held off implicating Fred until he was good and ready. “And last night at the high school? Were you gunning for Fred?”
He moved for the first time since we began talking, twisting his body around to face me. “I didn’t go there to kill him. I only wanted to talk.”
Presumably, Buddy had needed Jackson’s money both to finance his criminal ambitions—buying listening devices, for instance—and to implicate Fred McDermott, whom he resented for busting up his parents’ marriage. That done, what better conclusion than to have Jackson shoot McDermott? Jackson would be ruined, and McDermott’s slush fund would surface to sully his good name. A nice double play and a monument to Buddy’s late mother.
Jackson let out a deep sigh and looked out the side window at the darkness, not realizing how lucky he was. Still, I felt most of the bluster had gone out of him. “Come on, Jackson, don’t make me pull it out of you word by word. Let’s have it all. Now.”
He rubbed his forehead. “All right.” But he remained silent.
Exasperated, I hit the door handle and swung half out of the car, stopped only by his anguished cry. “I’m trying, all right? It’s hard. I’ve carried this son of a bitch around inside me for decades.”
I relented, moved by the unprecedented intensity of his emotion. I had no problem imagining how the burden of his secret had worn him down over the years. Nevertheless, I left the car door open as a warning.
The fresh air seemed to wash the rest of his reserve away. “She died trying to self-abort. She literally used a coat hanger, like in some bad melodrama. She left a note, naming me, blaming me even, for what she’d done to herself. I couldn’t believe it. Her mother was a conniving old bitch; got hold of the school, put on the pressure. I had to settle with her just to keep my job.”
“They didn’t fire you?” I asked.
“They had no grounds. She backed off after I paid her; told them it was a mistake, that her daughter had been a hysteric with a long history of blaming her problems on people she didn’t like. I’ll give the bitch that much: She was convincing. Still, I was under a microscope for quite some time. It was hell, and it became hell again.”
“How did the blackmail start?”
“There was a warning—a note—telling me ‘the shit was going to hit the fan,’ a phrase I’ve always despised, and that if I didn’t mind my p’s and q’s all this ancient history would be given to the press.”
“What were you supposed to do?”
He laughed shortly. “Pay, of course.”
“How much?”
“Damn near everything I had; about seventy thousand dollars overall.” He softly hit the back of the driver’s seat with his open hand, an oddly effeminate gesture. “Talk about a nightmare. When I finally figured out who it was, I wanted to tear his head off.”
Or shoot him in cold blood, I thought. “You mentioned you figured out it was McDermott from his slips of the tongue. But how did you know where to find him that night? Somebody must have told you.”
He hesitated just enough that I knew he was about to lie. “I had an informant.”
“Who?”
He gave me his superior look; he was starting to pull back, trying to cut his losses. “Sorry, Lieutenant, I have to protect my sources, too.”
“You’ve been played for a complete sucker, Jackson: blackmailed on the one hand, and set after us like an attack dog on the other. Your ‘informant’ used some of your money to fake a slush fund in McDermott’s name.”
Jackson stared at me, his mouth partly open.
“He also told you the blackmailer was going to be at the high school that night. You never wondered how he knew that? Maybe you thought he was a cop, privy to everything. But you took off, gun in hand, to lay your personal devil in his grave. He made a fool out of you, and you cooperated every step of the way. You screwed yourself by paying him off, and you fucked us over by getting in the way.”
His cheeks flushed red. “Now just a minute. You can’t…”
“The hell I can’t. How many times did you listen to your informant, so greedy for the shit he was doling out, you never once wondered how true it might be?”
“I don’t…”
“Even while you were being blackmailed, you never guessed the information you were fed came from the very man who was sucking you dry. What’s it like being that vain, Luman?”
I got out of the car and leaned back in. “This’ll all come out, one way or the other, and I hope like hell they ride you out of town on a rail.” He began to speak, but I quieted him with an abrupt hand gesture. “And if you throw that I’ll-sue-you crap at me again, I’ll make sure that rail is labeled with Cheryl Jacobson’s name.”
I slammed the door and left him with his mouth open.
IT WAS FOUR IN THE MORNING
. I was alone in my office. The window was open, the suddenly chilly predawn air actually lifting goose bumps across my bare forearm. I was filled with the exhaustion that follows hard, rewarding manual labor, content in the knowledge that, while Buddy Schultz was still on the lam, his being so was the only loose thread of the case.
Under Judge Harrowsmith’s demanding judicial guidance, we had gathered enough evidence to satisfy even James Dunn. The work had been painstaking and tedious, however, and I had finally told everyone to go home for a few hours’ sleep. Not that I was going to be alone for long; Ron Klesczewski had called to say that he couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to miss out on the kill, and that his leg would be perfectly content propped in a neighboring chair while he pitched in on the paperwork.
I took advantage of the lull, therefore, to make a phone call.
“Where have you been?” She didn’t even sound sleepy.
I put my feet up on my desk and leaned back in my chair. The weather, and Gail’s voice, was like the calm after the storm.
“I’ve been crossing
t
’s and dotting
i
’s.”
My satisfaction was obviously bordering on gloating. She laughed uncertainly. “You mean it’s over?”
“Not over over, but we know who’s behind it all. We have to hospital-tuck the corners and actually put our hands on the guy, but at least we know which way is up now.”
She hesitated slightly before asking, “Can you say who the killer is?”
“Deep background? Buddy Schultz, our night janitor.”
There was a stunned silence, as if I’d invoked the butler instead of the janitor. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Pretty driven guy. Lot of hate, lot of envy, a long memory, and sharp as a tack. Bad combination.”
She sighed. “Well, congratulations, Joe. You must feel a thousand pounds lighter.”
I chuckled. “Hell, no more than you. By the way, you might find certain changes on the board; no guarantees, but I’d lay money on it.”
I’d rarely heard her so elated. “Jackson?”
“Yup. Closetful of skeletons; keep Katz busy for a week. I had the distinct pleasure of feeding him some of his own medicine.”
“My God. Tell me more.”
It wasn’t the right thing to do. Indeed, it emulated the very same nasty habit I bemoaned in my fellow police officers, but for the next fifteen minutes, I gossiped. I told her of all our pitfalls and false trails, of all the people we’d suspected of one crime or another, from Paula Atwater, who’d told Dunn she would turn state’s evidence against Hanson, Cappelli, and the smooth-talking Kenny Thomas, to the Wentworths, father and daughter, once so high on the list, who I imagined would continue sharing breakfast in isolated splendor.
I hypothesized that Arthur Clyde would be forced to tend to his wife’s garden, that Rose Woll would find some other human island to latch onto like a shipwreck survivor, and that James Dunn would do everything in his power to throw the book at Luman Jackson. Fred McDermott, I thought, although momentarily startled by what had happened, would plod on toward retirement and pension like the desk-bound soldier he was.
I’d been looking out the window, at nothing in particular, enjoying the sound of Gail’s laughter in my ear, when a slight sound at my door shifted my attention. Standing there, his clothes dark with sweat, his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and narrow with fatigue, was Buddy Schultz. He was holding a Colt .45 on me, its barrel looking big enough to stick my thumb in. He nodded at the phone.
“Got to go,” I said, and hung up on Gail in mid-sentence, hoping to hell she’d guess something was wrong.
“Get up. We’re going on a short walk.”
My feet were still on the table, so I had to shift around a bit to do what he asked. In the process, my left hand dropped to the arm of my chair. The sudden pain in my hand reminded me of the deep cut I’d suffered pursuing Jackson through the classroom window. Instinctively, not knowing precisely why, perhaps thinking of Ron’s imminent arrival at the office, I ground my palm down hard on the point of the chair arm, reopening the wound and causing a small trickle of blood to course along my little finger and drip onto the floor. Buddy didn’t notice.
“What’ve you got in mind, Buddy?”
He smiled that absurdly friendly smile, all the more bizarre etched across that now blighted face. “I thought I’d kill you first, and then worry about my next move.”
“Why?” His answer was so senseless, my curiosity almost overtook my rising fear, but not quite.
“You messed me up, man.” He moved next to me, grabbed my left elbow like an escort, and began steering me toward the door. His gun was half buried in my back, making any evasive move a suicidal gesture.
“Buddy, you messed yourself up. You should have just killed Charlie and made his body disappear, instead of trying to pin the murder on John.”
He swung me left, away from the tiny corridor leading to the exit, and toward the dead-end conference room.
“Where’re we going?”
He stopped me in front of the row of cabinets at the back of the conference room. Manipulating some mechanisms in the small gap between the cabinets and the side wall, he caused an upper portion of one of the cabinets to swing open on invisible hinges, like the top half of a three-foot-thick Dutch door. Behind it, instead of unpainted wall, there was a man-sized hole revealing a huge vertical air shaft, a remnant of the old building’s original heating system. A wave of hot stale air poured over us, a bottled up memento of the past week’s hellish weather.