Silent Witness (20 page)

Theo braked to a stop beside the booth and swung the driver’s door open. As if to stretch after a long drive, she placed two hands against the car’s low roof and moved her head from side to side, back and forth, pretending to work out the kinks as she covertly looked for Bernhardt.

If Bernhardt had followed her, what would he have done? Would he have pretended to get gas? Air for the tires? Or would he turn into a side street, make a U-turn, park, watch?

It was, she knew, a fruitless speculation. In this congestion—Marin County at midday—he could be anywhere. He could even be a she: a lady private eye, hired by the day.

As if to protest, she suddenly pushed away from the Supra, turned toward the phone booth. Leaving the glass door open in the midday heat she punched out the number, waited, deposited the quarters, heard the phone at the winery begin to ring.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“San Rafael.”

“At the—” His voice dropped. “At the apartment?”

“No. I’m in a pay phone. A gas station.”

“Ah—” The soft exhalation, she was discovering, was Dennis’s reaction to stress. One of his reactions. One of many, since June sixteenth.

“What is it?”

“Our friend has turned up at a motel, here,” Dennis was saying.

“Bernhardt.”

“Yes.”

“That’s all? Nothing else? Nothing—” How to say it? “Nothing legal, nothing from the law?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Have you been thinking about—” Once more, Theo broke off. Then: “Have you been thinking about a solution?”

“A solution?”

“Jesus, Dennis. You know what I mean.”

John,
she should say.
What about John, goddammit?

“I want to talk to you—to see you. We’ve got to—” He broke off. He was foundering, losing it. She could imagine his face, torn by torment, coming apart.

Bernhardt—all because of Bernhardt.

“What’s the name of the motel?”

“It’s the Starlight. It’s the only motel in Saint Stephen.”

She looked at her watch. Almost always, Bruce went home for lunch. “I’ll call you back.” Abruptly, she broke the connection. Her address book was in the apartment. Could she remember Bruce’s number?

“A
H!” APPRECIATIVELY, MARTELLI RETURNED
his half-drained glass of beer to the table and wiped foam from his upper lip. “That first sip of beer. In this weather, it makes the whole day.”

“When does the heat break, up here?”

“A week or two, and it’ll start to cool down.”

“How long’ve you been at Brookside?”

“Four years. I was there before Price came.”

Bernhardt nodded, drank his own glass down to equal Martelli’s. It was an axiom of the investigator’s trade: never drink more than the subject drinks—or less.

“So what’s it all about?” Martelli asked. As he spoke, he exchanged nods and smiles with a man seated across the small barroom. It was, Bernhardt reflected, a cue worth remembering: in towns the size of Saint Stephen, in sparsely populated counties like Benedict, eyes were always watching.

“Janice Hale is here,” Bernhardt answered. “I told you that. Have you ever met her?”

Martelli smiled cheerfully. “I’m the hired help. I get to swim in the pool, but I’m not invited inside the master’s house.”

“I doubt that.”

“Okay—” Now the smile twisted ironically, an expression of indifference to the master’s whims. “I’ve been inside, but not to drink or eat or hobnob.”

“Well,” Bernhardt said, “Janice Hale is a considerable person. I guarantee that you’ll like her.”

“Actually,” Martelli said, “I’ve met her. And I agree, she’s okay. A successful artist, I understand.”

Bernhardt nodded. Then, lowering his voice as he leaned forward across the table, he said, “What I want—what Janice wants—is for her to talk with John, one on one, for an hour or so, without Dennis Price knowing about it.”

Doubtfully, Martelli drew a brown hand across a stubble-darkened jaw. His eyes were narrowed, shrewdly appraising. “That sounds like it could be a pretty tall order. Dennis keeps close track of John, these days.”

“I think I know how it can be done—if you’ll help.”

“Oh?” It was a noncommittal monosyllable.

“Almost every day you and John do something together—fish, go mountain-bike riding, whatever. Right?”

“Right.” Martelli smiled. “Call me a paid baby-sitter. That’s what it is, really.”

“Well, let’s say that, tomorrow, you and John go fishing. Janice and I would drive around to the gate on the western edge of the property, near the stream. I’d cut the chain on the gate. Janice and John could drive somewhere—have an ice-cream cone, whatever. Basically, that’s what this is all about, you know. Dennis is keeping Janice and John apart, won’t let her talk to John alone, even for a few minutes. Janice wants to know why.”

“She thinks Dennis murdered his wife. And she thinks John can help make the case against him.” Martelli spoke slowly, gravely. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

This moment, Bernhardt knew, was the moment that counted. This moment and the moment to come. Holding the other man’s gaze, he nodded. “That’s it.”

“She’s asking John to send his own father to jail.”

“She’s trying to find out who murdered her sister,” Bernhardt countered. “She wants justice.”

Martelli nodded in return, lifted his glass, drained it. His dark eyes had lost focus, blurred by recollection and recall. Then, speaking softly, eyes still far-focused, he said, “I like John. I like him a lot. I’m divorced. My kids are teenagers. Girls. I wasn’t really a very good father, when they were younger. I wasn’t a very good husband either. In this business—Benedict County boutique wineries, so-called—there’re a lot of bored wives, looking for action while their husbands are off making money. I couldn’t keep my hands to myself, and my wife took the kids and left. So John, he’s—he’s sort of a second chance for me, I guess. I—” He broke off, shook his head. It was an admission of defeat, a mute confession of failure, the wound that would never heal. Then: “Connie’s gone. She’s out of it. The question is, What’s best for John? Dennis sure as hell isn’t father of the year. But he is John’s father.”

“All Janice wants is some time with him. She wants to find out the truth. That’s what this is all about, Al. The truth. It’s as simple as that.”

As Bernhardt signaled for two more beers, Martelli said, “Nothing like this is simple. If you don’t know that, you’re in the wrong business.”

“I’m not saying this is simple. What I
am
saying, though—” For emphasis, Bernhardt let a long, sharp-focused beat pass, making hard eye contact. “What I
am
saying is that it all comes down to the truth. Bottom line, when the truth comes out, the bad guys get what’s coming to them—and so do the good guys. Justice, in other words. That’s what this is all about. Two words. Truth, and justice.” He waited while the waitress put two bottles of beer on the table. Then: “Do you think Dennis is telling the truth about that night? You were
there.
What’d you think?”

Meeting his eyes squarely, the other man said, “I don’t know. I honest to God don’t know. I know Dennis was terribly upset, and wasn’t really making a lot of sense. But that’s got nothing to do with the truth. That’s got to do with having your wife lying in a puddle of blood.”

Bernhardt decided to make no response, decided to let the tension between them work for him. Then, shifting his ground, gently cajoling, he said, “Give them that time together, Al. That’s all I’m asking. One, two hours. That’s all.”

Quietly, decisively, Martelli shook his head. “I can’t help you, Alan. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Feeling it all begin to slip away, he let the frustration show, let his voice rise:
“Why?”

“When we’re together, John’s my responsibility. When I said I was a baby-sitter, I wasn’t kidding. And sending him out through that gate with the chain cut—” Martelli spread his hands, shook his head. “No way.”

“Well, then, how about if Janice comes
in?”
Urgently, he accented the last word, salesman-shrill. “What’s wrong with that?”

Deliberately, Martelli reached for his beer, drank while he eyed Bernhardt over the rim of the glass. Then he smiled. “You’re a funny guy, Alan. You come on real low-keyed. But you’re stubborn, aren’t you?”

Bernhardt made no reply. He’d come to the time for silence. Everything had been said; all the tricks had been tried. Only silence was left.

“Okay—” Amused at himself, Martelli drained his glass, signifying good-humored capitulation. “You got a deal. I gather you’re familiar with the layout, the terrain.”

Conscious of a rising swell of excitement he knew he must contain, Bernhardt ruefully smiled. “I’ve spent a lot of time the past week, hanging around that goddam winery.”

“There’s a dirt road that leads up to that gate you’re talking about. It’s hard to find, but it’s there.”

Bernhardt nodded. “I know it.”

“The stream cuts across the northwest corner of the property, about a hundred yards from the gate. Right?”

“Right.”

“There’s a barn, just north of the stream.”

“Yes.”

“Okay—I’ll see that John gets to that barn. Let’s say about—” Calculating a time, he paused. “Let’s say about four-thirty, I think that’d be good. Often as not, Dennis goes out, goes into Saint Stephen, between four and six. That’s the time I usually reserve for John, work my schedule so that I can look after him, if Dennis decides to take off. Which, as I said, he does about half the time.”

“So Janice and I’ll meet you and John at the barn by four-thirty tomorrow. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Or maybe I’ll just send John, on his bike. I’ll see how it goes. If Dennis is around, maybe I’ll have to play that part by ear.” As he spoke, Martelli looked at his watch. “I’d better go. I’ve got a couple of new field hands coming. I’ve got to pick them up at the bus station.” He rose. “Thanks for the beer.”

“Al—” Bernhardt rose with him, offered his hand. “Jesus, thank
you.
Whatever comes of this—whatever the truth turns out to be—it’ll be thanks to you, believe me.”

Shaking hands, Martelli’s expression turned mischievous as he confided: “From the minute I met Dennis—two years ago, now—I figured him for a prick. And I’ve never seen anything to change my mind. I’ve got no idea whether he murdered Connie, who I liked. But if he did do it, and if he goes to jail, well—I guess it could be worse, for John.”

“Let’s take it one thing at a time. Let’s start with tomorrow, at four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty. Deal.”

B
ERNHARDT DROPPED HIS KEYS
on the bureau and picked up Paula’s note:

We’re out wine tasting, should be back around 7
P.M.
Janice wants to take us out to dinner. Fancy place. Smooches.

P.

He smiled, dropped the note on the bureau, began emptying his pockets.
Fancy place
meant a change from jeans to khakis, the best he could do.

As he turned toward the big picture window, about to draw the drapes before undressing and getting into the shower, he saw the driver’s door of a white pickup truck swing open. The truck was parked three cars away from Bernhardt’s Corolla; when he’d gotten out of the Corolla, Bernhardt had been aware of the driver’s eyes on him. The unspoken message: between the two of them there was a connection, a secret yet to be revealed. The driver was about thirty-five. His face had been expressionless: flat, opaque eyes, a tight, hard mouth. There was a kind of fixed, frozen hostility in the face, as if the man might be standing for a police line up.

Now the man was stepping out of the white pickup. He was about six feet, heavily muscled. Like Al Martelli, the stranger wore a tight T-shirt and jeans. Head slightly lowered, shoulders bunched, hands carried muscle man-wide, the stranger was advancing purposefully, his flat eyes fixed on Bernhardt’s door.

“… a guy who wears tight T-shirts with the cigarettes rolled in the sleeve, one of those,”
C.B. had said.

In seconds, the stranger would be at the door. Decision time. Fight or run.

Or talk, try to talk. Or don’t answer the door: run, really.

Quickly, Bernhardt moved to the door, shot the bolt. Just as quickly, eyes on the window, he stepped back to stand beside the bed. Through the window he saw the stranger approaching. If he could see the stranger outside, could the stranger see him inside? Answer: perhaps not. The window was hung with white gauzy curtains. If he remained motionless, waited for the stranger’s knock on the door, he probably wouldn’t be seen.

Waiting—remaining motionless—it was the most difficult exercise of all.

Now, briefly, the stranger was framed in the window—and now gone, out of the frame.

Then, at the door, knocking: three sharp, hard knuckle-raps.

Yes, there was a connection, something between them. In the sound of the knocking, he could hear the connection. One word. Violence.

“Just a minute.”

With his eyes on the window, Bernhardt knelt on the floor behind the bed, away from the window. Groping, he found the handles to the canvas satchel, his bag of tricks. He unzipped the bag, groped, finally found it: the sixteen-inch length of iron pipe wrapped in tape. He withdrew the pipe, shoved the satchel back under the bed.

Another series of knuckle-raps.

“Coming.”

He put the pipe on the low bureau, took a folded newspaper from the wastebasket, covered the pipe with the newspaper. He adjusted the paper so that a few inches of the pipe projected. Then, sans the flee-or-fight adrenaline rush he needed, he stepped to the door, drew back the bolt, and swung the door open.

“Is your name Bernhardt?”

“That’s right.” He decided to smile. “Who’re you?”

“My name is Carter. Bruce Carter.”

“Okay.” Bernhardt nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“You can lay off Theo Stark, for openers. Now. Right now, asshole.”

Without looking, Bernhardt knew Carter’s fists were clenched. For Carter, the adrenaline rush was working. For men like Carter, the rush was always working.