The Wizard of Death (2 page)

“More or less.”

“Well, he sure as hell couldn't have done it with a shotgun.”

“Try to get some sleep, Bea. There's nothing we can do about it tonight.”

Her voice dropped and her eyes clouded. “When I got home after it happened, I found blood on my clothes. Part of Randy Llewyn's brains were on my blouse … the life force of a good man was—was …” She turned away to stare out the window. “I can do something about it. It's about time this state had some decent gun legislation.”

“You're bucking powerful forces. More guns are manufactured in Connecticut than in the rest of the states put together.”

“Then it's about time they made yo-yos or teddy bears.” She strode to her desk in the corner of the room and snatched up a pen and clipboard. Returning to the bed, she fluffed a pillow, sat up against the headboard and furiously began to make notes. She paused for a moment and looked past Lyon. “If I make a trade-off with my vote against the highway bill with Senator Marcuse, he might back a gun-legislation bill. Jenkins is a Quaker; he'll co-sponsor. But I need Williams on my welfare reform bill …” She continued staring into space and chewing the end of her pen.

Lyon shrugged and started from the room. “I think I'll see if I can get some work done.” He softly closed the door.

“WENTWORTH, GET BACK HERE!”

Lyon opened the door again and stuck his head back into the bedroom. “You screamed, dear?”

“Don't get any ideas.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean. I mean no ideas between you and your friend, big chief. This is Murphysville's first murder in a long time, and it's a job for the state police. If you want to do something, you can help me by writing news articles and other PR stuff advocating gun legislation.”

“Thank you for my instructions.” Lyon smiled as Bea went back to her notes.

He walked slowly through the darkened house, trying not to think about Randy Llewyn's death.

Lyon Wentworth was a tall man who usually wore tennis sneakers without socks, denim pants and light sport shirts. His deep-cut facial lines often gave him a faraway and troubled look, but when he pushed back a forelock of blond-browning hair and smiled, he transformed that look to a fey expression of warmth.

In his study he slid into the chair before the desk. The lamp cast a glow on the unfinished manuscript to the right of the typewriter. He leafed through the pages. The book,
The Wobblies Strike Again
, was only a third completed, and so far the Wobblies hadn't struck very far. The Wobblies were benign monsters, and the children's book series concerning them had been his most successful, so successful that a national toy maker had created Wobbly dolls, two of which reposed on the study's mantel. He tried to make his pleasant monsters encompass all childhood fears and reduce them to manageable proportions.

He wondered if perhaps he hadn't been wrong over the years. Perhaps it wasn't things that go bump in the night or creatures that hovered in the dark that were the inchoate fears of life—possibly it was a strange fate, kismet, or luck that the gods called down upon us. Randy Llewyn, for all his attributes as a man and candidate, had by a stroke of ill luck set off a maniacal element in some crazed mind; if he hadn't, he would be here now, having cocktails and steaks at Nutmeg Hill House with Bea and others.

When the phone rang he glared at it. He had always thought that telephones were the devil's gift to mankind, along with such other devious devices as political campaigns, the internal-combustion engine, and hips on certain women you aren't married to. He reached for the ominous device, held it several inches from his ear, and uttered a tentative “Hello.”

“That you, Wentworth? Colonel Thornburton here.”

Oh, Jesus. It was Stacey Thornburton, his illustrator. The reversion to his former military title was a sure indication that something was amiss. “Hi, Stacey. How's the weather down there?”

“Passable, Wentworth, barely passable. Something has come up that will affect our relationship. I've got to reorient my priorities, and drawing pictures for kids is out.”

“What's the matter? Don't you like the outline for the new book?”

“The outline's fine. It's my kid—Robin. We have a real crisis down here. Robin refuses to go to West Point.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, but there are a lot of other good schools around.”

“Not with true military tradition, Wentworth. I might accept the Citadel, or, in a pinch, V.M.I., but it would never be the same—those Saturdays on the parade ground, plebe hazing—nothing like it.”

“What college does Robin have in mind?”

“Bard or Antioch. You won't believe this, Wentworth, it's hard to imagine, but those schools don't even have ROTC.”

“Have you done any work at all on
The Wobblies Strike Again?
”

“No. That's why I'm on the horn. I'm sending the outline back. I have retired from the artistic world.”

“You don't want to do that, Stacey.”

“How do you expect me to raise a child with guts when daddy spends all day drawing pictures for children's books?”

“You had a fine military record, Colonel,” Lyon replied respectfully, although he knew Stacey Thornburton, Colonel, U.S.A., Retired, had spent twenty years in the Quartermaster Corps.

“Robin forgets all that, Lyon.”

“Let Robin make the choice.”

“She doesn't know her own mind.”

“I don't know about North Carolina, but here in Connecticut there are a lot of girls who don't want to go to West Point.”

“Four great years of drill and discipline; she doesn't know what she's missing.”

“Sleep on it, Stacey,” Lyon said and hung up. Stacey and Lyon had met eight years earlier in a New York publisher's office. Lyon's first book had been purchased; and Stacey's, entitled,
Army Brat
, had been turned down, although there were many compliments on his fey illustrations. Lyon's editor had suggested that they consider a collaboration.

Lyon and the colonel had adjourned to a nearby cocktail lounge. After an hour's harangue on military tactics in Korea, Lyon had dismissed any possibility of collaborating with the former military officer.

Lyon wasn't sure when it happened, but he thought it fell somewhere between a critique of Monty's tactics at El Alamein and MacArthur's at the Inchon Reservoir when Stacey had begun to sketch on a small pad. With deft strokes, he quickly finished the ink drawing and gave it to Lyon.

“I think your characters, the Wobblies, look like this,” Stacey had said in an embarrassed aside.

Lyon had been stunned. With a few lines the colonel had created a drawing that brought the Wobblies to life. Lyon's benign monsters stared from the paper with the exact qualities he had always imagined they possessed. From that point on, there had never been any doubt that they would continue as a team.

For a moment he speculated on his two uniformed friends: one, a retired military officer who approached a near caricature of his breed; and the other, a police chief whose massive appearance seemed to categorize the man. And yet, in each man a deep vein of gentleness, often hidden from the exterior world, was the very essence of his being. In that, there might be hope for us all.

The phone rang again, and he snatched it up in irritation. “Go to sleep, Stacey. I'll call you in the morning.”

“I've got something on the Llewyn killing,” Rocco Herbert's voice said without preamble.

“I'm not home,” Lyon said and stuffed the phone into the bottom desk drawer and covered it with a thesaurus and a dictionary.

He rolled a piece of paper into the typewriter and began to type: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party”—over and over again as the phone continued its muffled, incessant ringing.

Then he shrugged, opened the drawer, and grabbed the receiver. “Many times no, damn it! I promised Bea I wouldn't get involved. I don't want to get involved. Call your brother-in-law on the state police, call in the F.B.I, for violation of civil rights. Good-bye.”

Before the receiver hit the cradle he heard Rocco say that he was calling from the squad car and would be at Nutmeg Hill in five minutes.

Lyon sighed and poured himself a glass of sherry.

Rocco Herbert eased his large frame into the leather chair in the corner of the study and drank his vodka neat. The single light from the desk lamp gave a diffused illumination to the room, and it made Lyon recall nights in Korea. Then, Rocco Herbert had been a Ranger captain. After intelligence-gathering missions he would come to Lyon's tent at division headquarters, and with a Coleman lantern swinging from the center pole, the two men would talk softly and drink whatever was available. As an intelligence officer, Lyon had existed on the information the large Ranger officer provided, and the relationship had grown and ripened when they discovered their mutual origins in Connecticut.

There was an immediate juxtaposition of fragmentary pictures from earlier in the day. Rocco, at the political rally on the green taking two small tow-headed children across the street, their fingers entwined in his. Rocco, kneeling, the Magnum sputtering calculated shots at spaced intervals toward the church steeple.

“I thought you'd be interested in what I've turned up so far.”

“Come on, Rocco. Don't bait me like that. Bea and I knew Llewyn well. He was a friend more than a political ally of Bea's. We're as interested in your catching his killer as anyone in the state, but don't try to grapple me into this. It's headline stuff. You can get all the help you need.”

“We did pretty well together the last time.”

“I had a personal reason to work on the little girl's killing.”

Rocco didn't answer. He poured himself another drink, sat back in the chair and twirled his glass. “Perhaps as an old friend you'd be interested in my shop talk.”

“You're as obvious as a rattlesnake. What about Captain Norbert?”

“I'm only using the state police for lab work.”

“Oh, great. An ego trip.” Seeing Rocco wince, Lyon regretted the remark. As Murphysville's chief of police, Rocco commanded a force that sometimes totaled twelve men and was often sensitive about the mundane nature of his work.

“No, Lyon. Not an ego trip.”

“I'm sorry, and I am interested in your work, but in this instance there are other considerations. Bea is understandably very upset. It was pretty damn traumatic for her to be so close to the killing. I just can't have myself involved in something so painful for her.… Hell, it's not my job or my duty as a citizen.”

“Didn't say it was.”

“You're a big boy now.” That he was, Lyon thought. At six feet eight and 270 pounds, Rocco Herbert was the largest police officer in the state. “You're also a bright man who will do all anyone can.”

“We found the weapon in the church. A thirty-thirty, two shots fired.”

“Shell casings?”

“Two.”

“I want to compliment you on your fast reaction at the green. Immediately picking out where the shots came from and returning fire must have disconcerted the sniper.”

Rocco nodded noncommittally. “The lab checked out the rifle and established it as the murder weapon to the exclusion of all other rifles.”

“Any prints?”

“No.”

“Damn it all, Rocco. You're trying to involve me. Seriously, I have a wife who is upset, and a book to finish for a contract deadline.”

“Because of his helmet, my description of the bike rider is no damn good. Of course we've made plaster casts of the tire marks. By the way, he got into the church through …”

Lyon swiveled his chair and began to type: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of …”

Rocco continued, raising his voice over the typing. “Back door of the church was unlocked and the sexton was out on the green listening to the speeches.”

Exasperated, Lyon turned to face Rocco. “I will talk about old army times, you can give me the latest gossip from around town, we will commiserate together over the state of the world, but no murder details.”

“The selectmen are going to be mad as hell over your wrecking the squad car.”

“Me wreck it! We were chasing the bastard.”

“You were driving. An unauthorized driver at that. You never could drive well, Lyon.”

“It wouldn't fit between the rocks.”

“Shouldn't have tried,” Rocco said and smiled.

“Isn't it time for you to go home?”

“I need another belt,” Rocco said as he poured another drink.

“You're really hitting the stuff tonight.”

The two men were quiet until Rocco eased himself from the leather chair and crossed to the fireplace. He put his glass on the mantel and ran his hand along the rough fieldstone for a moment before beginning to pace the room. “There's something …” His voice trailed off.

“I absolutely refuse to ask what,” Lyon said and found himself discomfited by the obvious agitation in his friend. “It's not all incumbent on you, Rocco. As I said, the state has a host of back-up facilities to help you. No one in the world expects you to tackle the case with your small force.”

“I have to tell you.” The brittle words died away in the quiet room.

“Something I really should know?”

“I'm afraid so,” Rocco said softly.

“You had better get it over with.”

“It's in the car. I'll be right back.”

Rocco left, and in a few minutes Lyon heard the slam of a car trunk. Fear slipped into the room. His study had always been a refuge, a place away from the world, a sanctuary which had now become filled with apprehension. He knew his friend well enough to discern that he was concerned, and that the concern dealt with Lyon.

Rocco returned carrying a large case and a portable movie screen. Wordlessly he set up the screen and positioned the projector.