The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (23 page)

“Tuesday morning ordinarily nobody comes,” he said, “nobody phones. I sneak down here to see whether it’s come back or not. I had it in high school. I got a college scholarship on it—Wheaton, Illinois. But by the time the term started in the fall, I’d lost it.”

“You probably grew,” Dave said. “It happens.”

The tall man compressed his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t know. Eye-hand coordination, whatever—it was gone, simply gone. I was frantic. I worked. I prayed. It never came back.” He laughed at himself. “In my secret dreams, one of these days I’ll come down here and it will be back the way it was.” He raised a warning finger and his grin was a kid’s. “‘Call no man a fool,’” he said.

“All right.” Dave watched him pick up a seersucker jacket that matched his trousers. “My name’s Brandstetter. I’m investigating the death of Gerald Dawson. For Sequoia Life and Indemnity.” He almost said Medallion, a twenty-five-year habit. But the morning after his father’s death, he’d cleared out his handsome office high up in Medallion’s glass-and-steel tower on Wilshire. This was his first free-lance assignment. “The police don’t seem sure of where he was the night he was murdered. That bothers me.”

“I don’t know, myself,” the tall man said.

“You’re the minister here?” Dave said.

“Lyle Shumate,” the tall man said. Jacket over his arm, he headed for the double doors. “We’re going to miss Jerry Dawson. A born leader. True Christian.”

“He had a men’s group.” Dave followed the preacher. “They didn’t meet that night?”

“Their meetings were frequent but not regular.” Shumate went into the kindergarten room under pink and blue crepe-paper streamers and crouched to squint at the hamster. It came out of a heap of wood shavings and looked at him, bright-eyed. It was chewing. Shumate touched a bottle hung on the wire of the cage. There was water in it. “You’re okay, my friend,” he said, and stood.

“The Born-Again Men,” Dave said.

“They’d get together by telephone,” Shumate said, “and set a time.” He pulled open the outside door. Heat and glare struck in. He let Dave go out before him and pulled the door shut. “But they didn’t meet that night.” His soles went gritty up the steps. “Some of our kids have a gospel rock group. They used the Born-Again Men’s room that night.” He climbed to the door marked
OFFICE
and again motioned Dave through it ahead of him. “It must have been noisy in the basement that night.”

“Basketball practice too,” Dave said.

“You know about that?” Shumate said.

“But you weren’t here,” Dave said. “You can’t tell me whether Bucky Dawson practiced with the team.”

“If he says so, he did.” Shumate went into
PASTOR’S STUDY,
sat behind a desk that didn’t look busy, and waved Dave to a chair upholstered in nubby blue-and-orange tweed to match the curtains and carpet.

“It’s a team that works hard,” Dave said. “According to Bucky, they didn’t quit till almost midnight.”

“We lost the playoffs last year to the Nazarenes from Arcadia,” Shumate said. “We don’t want that to happen again. If Bucky told you they worked till midnight, they worked till midnight. He’s the straightest boy I know. Intelligent, well-balanced, decent. We all look up to Bucky—youngsters and grownups alike.”

“He acted troubled when I saw him,” Dave said. “A lot of torment about sex.”

“What?” Shumate stared, mouth working at a smile of disbelief. “We can’t be talking about the same boy. I’ve heard Bucky on the subject—no one could be better informed and clearer headed. He talks to youth groups all the time. Sex, narcotics, abortion, alcoholism. All those matters the church used to stick its head in the sand about when you and I were kids. It’s a different world. Those things have to be faced squarely and honestly today and dealt with.”

“And Bucky Dawson faces them squarely and honestly and deals with them?” Dave said.

“And helps other youngsters to do so.” Shumate nodded. Then he frowned and sat forward. “You’re not trying to say that Bucky was somehow mixed up in his father’s murder.”

“Not if he was here playing basketball,” Dave said. “The medical examiner says his father was killed between ten and midnight. And I’ve got a problem with that. Bucky didn’t find the body when he got home. His mother found it in the morning. Now, look, Reverend—”

“Call me Lyle,” Shumate said.

“The police checked with the other men in Dawson’s group, and they each told the same story. They didn’t meet that night. They didn’t go out on one of their vigilante forays—”

“Vigilante forays?” Shumate’s face went stiff.

“You’ve heard about them. Harassing the customers going in and out of the massage parlors, the gay bars? Ripping out the shrubbery in the park? Setting fire to Dash Hummer’s automobile? Throwing books around at Lon Tooker’s place, pouring paint on the carpets?”

“There’s no proof of any of that,” Shumate said.

“No legal proof, no,” Dave said. “But you’re not a lawyer or a judge. You’re a minister.”

“The law has fallen into Godless hands in our country,” Shumate said. “It protects evildoers. Decent people haven’t a chance. I’m talking about human law. But there’s a higher law—God’s law.”

“And Dawson and his raiders carried out that law—right? And they didn’t see anything wrong with lying to the police about their activities, covering up for each other, because the police are trapped in a corrupt system, isn’t that it?”

“I don’t know about that,” Shumate said stubbornly. “I never heard it from Jerry or any of his group or from anyone else in this church. Only from outsiders, barging in here with wild charges, people totally depraved, every one of them.”

Dave gave him a one-cornered smile. “I didn’t think See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil were Christians,” he said. “I thought they were monkeys.”

“You and I both know where the evil is in this neighborhood,” Shumate said, “and it’s not in Bethel Church.”

“Did Dawson have a high-pitched, gravelly voice?”

Shumate blinked. “You could describe it like that.”

“Easy to mistake for anyone else’s voice?” Dave asked.

“You couldn’t miss it,” Shumate admitted. “Why?”

“He captained the raid on Lon Tooker’s shop,” Dave said. “Six men. Masked. They all claimed afterward they were downstairs here, praying. Now—if they lied to the police that time, they could have lied to them about Dawson’s whereabouts on the night he was killed. Now, I’m asking you—did they have some action planned for that night?”

“And I’m telling you,” Shumate said, “I don’t know. If Tooker believed Jerry Dawson raided his shop, then why doesn’t that suggest to you what it suggests to the police—that Tooker killed him?”

“For one thing, the raid took place ten days before Dawson’s death. Why would Tooker wait?”

“Maybe Jerry went there that night?”

“A witness says no. And Dawson didn’t see relatives that night. He didn’t see friends. He didn’t come here to the church. He wasn’t at his business. Where was he? Whom did he see and for what reason?”

“His life was an open book,” Shumate said. “I knew the man almost as well as I know myself. He was uncomplicated, straightforward. He had a successful business, gave God the credit, contributed generously to this church—and not just in money; in works, good works of all kinds.”

“He was around here a lot,” Dave said. “All right, then tell me this—did you notice anything out of the ordinary about him before he was killed? Was there any change in him? Did he make any out-of-the-way remarks? Was he—?”

“Hold it.” Shumate frowned, pressing his temples with his fingertips, eyes shut. “There was something. Yup. I’d forgotten about it.” He gave Dave a look that was half smile, half frown. “You must get high marks in your job, Mr. Brandstetter.”

“I’ve been at it a long time,” Dave said. “You’re about to break the Dawson case wide open, are you?”

Shumate laughed. “I don’t think so. But it did seem a little odd at the time, a little out of character. It was after Sunday-morning service. In the parking lot. I went around there, wheeling an elderly parishioner in his chair. He only gets out on Sunday. It cheers him up to have a man to talk to for a few minutes. He’s surrounded at home by a wife and three daughters. And after he was in the car and I was putting the wheelchair into the trunk, I noticed Jerry Dawson in a far corner of the lot talking to a big young fellow in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots.”

“A stranger,” Dave said.

“I’d never seen him before. He had been inside for the service, though, way up in the balcony at the back. He was noticeable because he has a beard.” Shumate smiled faintly. “Like an Old Testament prophet. And bright blue eyes. Black beard, black brows, blue eyes.”

“You didn’t hear what they were talking about?”

“No, but I think they were quarreling. The boy swung away angrily. He slammed the door of his truck. It was one of those outsize pickup trucks, with big, thick tires. Some sort of machinery in the back. He burned rubber leaving that parking lot. But that wasn’t all that was unusual. Jerry Dawson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. I waved to him, since he’d noticed me watching. But he didn’t speak or wave back. He just walked off to his car.”

“And he didn’t bring the matter up to you later?”

“There was no later,” Shumate said. “In two days’ time, he was dead.”

“No idea who the bearded kid was?”

“Dawson’s business is renting and leasing film equipment. You know that, I suppose. Quite often Christian filmmakers come to him. He’s known for giving them discounts. Since this young fellow sat through the service, I thought his connection to Jerry might be that. He could have been an actor.” Shumate shrugged. “Director? I don’t know. It’s hard to judge people by their appearance anymore.”

“His partner might know.” Dave stood up. “Thanks for your time.” Shumate rose and they shook hands. Dave went to the door, opened it, and turned back. “One more thing. Did he make any extra donations lately?”

“No.” Shumate cocked an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“In the last two months, his bank records show he wrote a check for seven hundred dollars and another for three hundred fifty. Not part of his banking pattern.”

Shumate scratched an ear. “I don’t know,” he said.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1978 by Joseph Hansen

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

978-1-4804-1686-4

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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