Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective) (22 page)

When I raised up again he was hurrying back toward the ramp. I might have lost sight of him in the fog except that he still had the flash switched on; I could see it flicking out between the moored boats—and I could follow it all the way past the ramp and around onto the connecting walkway.

Coming out here, too.

I crawled back along the bulkhead, feeling with my hands. Storage locker aft, near the door—but it was padlocked. I groped above it. Touched cold metal that my fingers told me was a wood-handled steel hook, attached to the bulkhead with clips. Gaff, for hooking and holding heavy fish. Weapon. I took it down, crept back under the wheel. Knelt there gripping it across my chest.

The sodden clothing clung like a wrapping of ice; tremors racked me and I had to lock my teeth together to keep them from chattering. The cramp had loosened a little, but the leg still ached. All of me ached: muscles, joints, bones. My face was stiff with saltcake; the rest of my skin had a puckered feel, cold and hot at the same time, as if with fever.

Pneumonia, I thought.

Flickers of light shone beyond the windshield, went on past. Muffled slap of Greene’s shoes on the float outside. Could he tell I had come out of the water there, climbed on board this boat? No. Float was already wet, sloshed over, and the deck was wet too from the dripping mist. He might decide to check out each of the moored boats, but that wasn’t likely; take too much time, and he could not be sure of what had happened to me. For all he knew I had made it to shore and was already on my way to summon the cops. He just could not afford to hang around much longer.

Another ten seconds passed.

Come on, you son of a bitch. Move out, start running.

Ten more seconds.

Light in the glass again, centered there for an instant. Then it moved off. Footfalls, fading.

Darkness except for the nightlights.

Silence.

I let out a breath through my nostrils. But stayed where I was for a time, listening. Still no sounds from outside. Raised up again, leaned close to the windshield. Emptiness across the way, no movement of any kind. Faint movement of light far down to the right, though, reflected off the fog—Greene over on the float?

Half a minute. Forty seconds.

And the beam reappeared, hazed and steady, on the walkway at the shore end. Moved along there and around onto the west-side float, dancing out again between the boats. Stopped at the
Kingfisher
, traced a path up across the deck, splashed over the wheelhouse. Probed inside. Vanished.

More waiting, face pressed close to the glass. One minute. Two. Three. The light poked back out, retraced across the deck and down onto the float. Shut off again in front of the ramp. Four beats. Black silhouette: Greene climbing up the metal ladder, something large and squarish in his right hand. Suitcase?

Then he was gone, swallowed by the mist and the darkness.

I used the gaff as a fulcrum to push myself onto my feet. Left leg took my weight now, but I would have to favor the right just in case. I leaned against the binnacle, staring out. More waiting, to make sure he didn’t decide to come back.

Emptiness.

Okay, enough. Enough. Back along the bulkhead to the door, out on deck. Over the gunwale, still hanging onto the gaff, and down the float to the connecting walkway.

Stillness.

Around to the ramp. Up the ladder in cautious movements, to peer down the ramp at the highway.

Deserted highway: Kellenbeck’s Cadillac was gone.

Onto the ramp, along the ramp. Stumbling a little now; legs wobbly, threatening to give out. The wind welding clothing to skin, making me shake like a man with palsy.

Drop the gaff, cross the road. Packed-dirt driveway there, leading up to where houselights glowed behind the screen of fog. Up the driveway. Stumbling again, falling, getting up. House taking shape—gray hexagonal thing with a wrap around porch and switchback stairs leading up. Climb the stairs, lean panting beside the door. Knock on the door. Somebody coming, somebody opening up—

And it was over.

God—it was over.

The next few hours were a time I lived through with a kind of schizoid detachment: part of me seemed to retreat, to become a disinterested observer, while the other part continued to operate more or less normally. Temporary reactional dysfunction, the psychologists call it, induced by a period of intense physical and emotional stress. And the hell with them and their fancy labels.

The people who lived in the house were the Muhlheims, a couple of artists in their forties. They were helpful and solicitous types and the first thing they tried to do was to get me out of my wet clothes; but all I could think about was using the phone. Muhlheim wrapped a blanket around me while I called the county police in Santa Rosa. I used Eberhardt’s and Donleavy’s names to get through to a lieutenant named Fitzpatrick and laid out the story for him in clipped sentences, some of which I had to repeat because of the way my teeth kept clacking together; the only thing I omitted was mention of the private eye as a horse’s ass: my breaking into the Kellenbeck Fish Company. Fitzpatrick asked a couple of terse questions, and my answers and the urgency in my voice seemed to convince him I was telling a straight story. He instructed me to stay where I was, said he would take care of contacting other police agencies.

When I hung up I let Muhlheim show me to the bathroom. He and his wife had listened to my end of the conversation with plenty of interest, but to his credit he did not try to question me. He gave me some dry clothes—we were about the same size—and left me alone to strip and take a five-minute, steaming-hot shower. Which only just dulled the edge of my chill, but which at least stopped the shaking.

Mrs. Muhlheim had a pot of hot tea and another blanket waiting when I came out. Plus some salve for the barnacle cuts on my hands. Ten more minutes passed, most of it in silence; the tea warmed me a little more. Then there was a sharp rapping on the front door. And things began to happen.

Two highway patrolmen. Questions. A guy from the Coast Guard station at Doran Park. A pair of county Sheriffs deputies. More questions. Another highway patrolman. A telephone call to Santa Rosa made by one of the deputies. And after that they took me out of there, bundled in an old overcoat offered up by Muhlheim, and down to the Highway Patrol substation south of Bodega.

Fitzpatrick, a youngish guy with an authoritarian manner, arrived from Santa Rosa. More questions. Report from the Coast Guard: They had fished Kellenbeck’s body out of the bay near the marina, shot once through the heart. A doctor showed up, summoned by somebody along the line, and spent a little time examining me. No fever, he said, no other signs of incipient pneumonia. He gave me some pills to swallow, told me to see my physician if I developed any serious symptoms, and went away.

Eberhardt called from his home—Fitzpatrick had notified the Hall of Justice and they in turn had contacted Eb—and I was allowed to talk to him. In concerned tones he asked how I was. I said I was fine, wonderful, that son of a bitch Greene had come within minutes of killing me dead. Then I told the story all over again, for the fifth or sixth time. I’ll get back to you in the morning, he said. Yeah, I said.

Greene was still at large. But there was an All-Points Bulletin out on him, Fitzpatrick told me—it was only a matter of time. The head of the Alcohol and Firearms Unit office in San Francisco called. I got to talk to him, too, and answer some more questions, and listen to him tell me he would send agents up in the morning to interrogate me “when you’re feeling better.”

I was so tired by this time, from all the talk and the pills and the physical and mental strain, that I had trouble holding my head up. I asked Fitzpatrick if I could please, for Christ’s sake, be taken somewhere so I could get some sleep. Yes, he supposed I had been through enough for one night. Damned right, I thought. Put you up at The Tides Motel, somebody said, that okay? Just dandy.

Out of there finally and into a car, Fitzpatrick driving. Where was my car? he asked. Up by the Kellenbeck Fish Company. Keys? Lost in the bay, they were in my overcoat pocket, but there’s another set in a little magnetic box behind the rear bumper. He’d have somebody pick it up and bring it to the motel.

Motel. Check-in. Room. They went away, saying they would talk to me again in the morning. Bed. Sleep. Dreams of ice and water, guns and darkness, dead faces floating at the bottom of the sea.

Long, bad night . . .

A knocking on the door woke me. I sat up a little groggily and it took me a few seconds to orient myself, remember where I was. Gray light in the room, filtering in through half-closed drapes over the window. I squinted at my watch It was a good old waterproof Timex and still ticking away, undamaged by the salt water last night; the hands read eight-twenty-five.

I swung my feet out, sat on the edge of the bed. The knocking came again. I called, “Just a minute,” and then stood up in a tentative way, testing my legs. Stiff, with a faint weakness in the joints. Same feeling in my arms. My head was stuffy and there was congestion in my lungs, the kind I used to have before I gave up cigarettes. Otherwise I seemed to be in reasonably good shape for what I had been through.

I put on Muhlheim’s clothes and went over and opened the door. Fitzpatrick. He asked me how I was, but not as if it mattered a great deal to him, and handed me my car keys.

“Greene?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ll get him, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried. Just eager.”

“Sure. Federal agents are here; they said they’d be over to see you later this morning. So don’t go anywhere for awhile.”

“How about after I see them? Can I leave for home then?”

“You can as far as I’m concerned,” Fitzpatrick said. “But stop by the substation before you go; there’s a statement waiting for you to sign.”

After he left I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Beard stubble, puffy eyes, mottled skin, hair sticking up every which way like a fright wig: face to scare little children with. I turned out of there, put on Muhlheim’s overcoat, left the room, and hunted up my car. Reversed the procedure, carrying my overnight case, and then went to work on the beard stubble with a razor.

While I shaved I did some heavy thinking for the first time since early last night. Not about Greene and what had happened in the bay; that brush with death, and my own foolishness that had led to it, was something I did not want to relive. What I did think about was the bootlegging and the murders of Jerry Carding and his father. And about all the questions that were still unanswered, the one major question that was still unanswered.

Who had murdered Christine Webster?

The mental work got me nowhere. And yet, if I kept going over things enough times, maybe there was something I knew and could remember—like the little things I had known and remembered about Kellenbeck and the Cardings. Maybe . . .

The telephone rang just as I finished toweling off. I went into the other room, picked up the receiver. And listened to Eberhardt’s voice say, “It’s me. How you feeling this morning?”

“Fair. Better than I ought to.”

“No after effects?”

“None I want to talk about.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Guy in the Highway Patrol office up there told me where you were. According to him, no word on Greene yet.”

“I know. Fitzpatrick came by a few minutes ago.”

“You wouldn’t be planning to stick around up there until he’s caught?”

“Hell no. I’ll be home as soon as they’re done with me.”

“When’ll that be?”

“Sometime this afternoon, I guess. I’ve got to go sign a statement. And see a couple of Federal agents before that.”

“Me too,” he said. “I just got off the phone with one of the Alcohol and Firearms boys.”

“Have you talked to Donleavy?”

“Little while ago.”

“Is he dropping the charges against Martin Talbot?”

“That’s what he says. But the Carding murder is still officially open until Greene turns up. Or some kind of incriminating evidence does.” He paused. “The Christine Webster case is still open too, damn it.”

“Greene didn’t kill her, Eb,” I said.

“So you managed to tell me last night. You’re probably right—but I’d like it better if you weren’t.”

“I would too. But there’s just no motive for him to’ve shot the girl. Jerry Carding only had two copies of his article the night he was killed; there wasn’t a third he could have mailed to Christine.”

“Greene might have been afraid he’d told her something,” Eberhardt said, “and went after her for that reason.”

“It doesn’t add up. Why would Greene be more worried about Christine than, say, Steve Farmer or Sharon Darden—people right here at Bodega Bay? And if he had wanted to kill her, why wait until Tuesday night to do it? And why shoot her with a .32 instead of the .38 he used on Carding or the Browning automatic he tried to use on me?”

Eberhardt sighed. “I can’t argue with any of that,” he said. “All right, Greene didn’t kill Christine. But then who did? And why? Where’s the connection?”