The Butcher's Boy bb-1 Page 7

  “Did anything else seem to be on his mind? Was he depressed lately or nervous?”

  “Al Veasy didn’t commit suicide,” said O’Connell. “His truck blew up is all. Must have been a leak in the fuel system. Could happen to anybody the way they make ’em now. If I was his wife I’d sue General Motors.”

  “So it looked to you like just a tragic accident?”

  “What else? Murder? What for?”

  “I just have to cover all the possibilities, Mr. O’Connell.”

  Elizabeth thanked him and walked back to the waiting police car. Both doors were open and the officer was leaning against the trunk gazing off down the road through his mirror-lens sunglasses. He was probably nice looking, she thought, but you’d have to get him out of uniform to tell. They always seemed to be covered with bits of metal. “Where to?” he said.

  “Twenty-seven twenty-four Grove Avenue.”

  “Veasy’s house?”

  “That’s right,” said Elizabeth. All the stops were routine, she thought—no way to break out of it, nobody new to ask.

  The rest of Elizabeth’s morning was just as unproductive. What she got from Mrs. Veasy was inarticulate grief. At least the investigating officers had managed to find out a little about the dead man’s habits. But they did this kind of thing every day, and were probably pretty good at it—ignoring what people were trying to say—their theories, opinions about people and life and death—and listening for what they had to throw in to make it comprehensible to an outsider—specific information about the victim’s habits, behavior, friends, and enemies.

  Elizabeth was suddenly tired. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost noon. “Let’s go back to the station,” she said. The policeman drove with a special kind of authority, a tiny bit faster than anyone else on the straight, level highway, so the other cars would move aside to let them cruise by. She looked out on the rows of low suburban houses as they slid past, now and then surprised by a squat date palm or a row of towering eucalyptus trees. If it weren’t for the plants this could be Indiana. Or Virginia, anyway. Just about anything seemed to grow here. But not on Grove Avenue. The houses were built so close together there wasn’t even room for a decent lawn.

  When they reached the station she asked to use the desk sergeant’s telephone and called Padgett in Washington. “Hi, Elizabeth,” he said. There was something odd about his voice, but she couldn’t identify it. Amusement? Spite?

  “Hi, Roger,” she said. “What have you got for me?”

  “Precision Tooling isn’t going to help much. They’re purer than Caesar’s wife. Started in 1936 by a couple of master machinists who hired a few friends, then grew when the war came. Made airplane parts, patterns for drop-forged ship fittings, things like that. Been a minor defense subcontractor ever since.”

  “Any chance of new stockholders? Unusual loans or anything?”

  “Elizabeth, these people have been on our books for thirty-five years. They get a new clearance every time a contract comes up for renewal. If they moved the water cooler we’d know it. They’re in perfect health.”

  “Well, save the file for me anyway. What about the union?”

  “Clean too, at least so far. They’re part of the file, but we’re still checking with the Department of Labor. All we know at the moment is there aren’t any shady characters hanging around the factory; that was all Defense was interested in. Labor should know something.”

  “When they answer ask them for information on the pension plan.”

  “The what?”

  “The union’s pension fund. And oh, yes. I’m afraid I’ve got a new one. Fieldston Growth Enterprises. The union invested in it.”

  “All right, but keep the fishing to a minimum, okay?”

  “Sure, Roger. Whatever you say,” said Elizabeth, without conviction. “I’ll call you early tomorrow.”

  “Wait a minute, Elizabeth,” said Padgett. “Brayer wants to talk to you.” The irony was back in his voice.

  Then Brayer’s voice said, “Elizabeth, have you heard the news about Senator Claremont?”

  “No. What about him?”

  “He died in his hotel room in Denver last night. It looks like a stroke or a heart attack, but the autopsy will take a while. There’s going to be an investigation, so I’m taking you off what you’re working on. I want you in Denver by late afternoon or early evening.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t help herself. She said, “What for? It’s crazy! I’ve been on this case exactly four hours, not to mention the fact that there’s nothing for me to do in Denver when I get there.”

  “No use arguing about it, you’re going. It’s orders from the Attorney General’s office. We’ve got to send a field agent, and you’re the closest one that I can spare today. This thing Roger’s working on looks big, and everybody’s tied up.”

  “You trying to tell me the FBI doesn’t have a field office in Denver?”

  “Damn it, Elizabeth! I’m not going to stand here for the rest of the day justifying my decisions to you. There are reasons, that’s all. Now get moving.” He hung up, hard.

  Elizabeth whispered to herself as she hung up the telephone, “Yes, sir!” When she looked up, Hart was coming down the hall with the chief of police.

  “Chief, thank you very much for your cooperation,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” It was all very cordial, but there was an edge to his voice as though he were trying not to sound angry.

  As they walked down the steps to their rented car he said, “Was that your call from home?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Did you get one too?”

  “Of course. A little while ago.” The anger was definite now.

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “I do,” he said. “Politics. Pure politics. They have to reassure the senators who vote on budgets that we take it seriously when one of them dies. Even if it’s a heart attack.”

  “But I’m not even a field investigator. I’m a data analyst.”

  “Who cares? There’s not going to be anything to investigate. We’re just there for the roll call.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why they pulled us off an actual fresh murder when there must be thirty or forty teams closer to Denver who are better qualified than I am at least—”

  “How do you know this was a murder?” he asked.

  “Well it is, isn’t it?” she said. “Nothing else makes any sense at all. I was at Veasy’s house this morning. They have a yard you could cover with a bedspread, and he was supposed to be carrying big sacks of fertilizer around in his pickup truck. What for? And the other thing is that you’re really angry and I don’t think you would be unless you thought it was a murder too, so we can at least agree on that even if nobody else does. If you didn’t think the case was important—that is, a murder—you wouldn’t care if they took us off it.”

  As she spoke, the words came faster and faster until Hart could hardly follow her. He took his eyes off the road for a second and saw Elizabeth was staring straight ahead with her brows knitted a little, which meant she had settled that part of it and was already launched into the next stage, whatever that might be, so before she got too far he’d better tell her. “Do you want to know what I found this morning in the union hall parking lot?”

  She turned to him again and smiled. “Of course, Bob.” He wasn’t sure if she was humoring him or not, but he went on.

  “A few bits of wire and a fragment of the jacket of a blasting cap. Both charred. So I guess we know that much, anyway.”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “That much is for certain. Now if only we didn’t have to go on a side trip to Colorado. I wonder what it’s like there this time of year.”

  “Cold, clear. Now and then some snow.”

  “Terrific,” she said. “And all just so the Senate staff can look at a report in two months and see that two people from Washington were there.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Elizabeth. They won’t have to wai
t more than a day. There’ll be reporters, photographers, probably national television. Senator Claremont was a very important man. That’s the real reason why they sent us, I think. After tomorrow’s newspapers whoever’s there won’t be of much use in undercover stuff, and we’re home office.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, and slumped back in the seat. She thought, wonderful. Elizabeth Waring on national news in her thin California clothes investigating a death by old age. On national television. While somewhere in Southern California there would be two clerks, both of them busy forgetting what the man looked like that bought the hundred-pound bags of fertilizer and the blasting caps last Friday around supper time. Probably they’d be watching television. And what they’d see was … Elizabeth Waring. In Denver, Colorado, there, by her official presence alone to reassure ninety-nine men over sixty that there was no such thing as a death by old age.

  8

  By now most of it had probably happened, he thought. Just after daylight somebody would have gone through the alley and seen the two of them lying there. Around 7:30 or so whoever owned the car would have come out expecting to drive it to work. And the Senator—hard to say what time a senator would get up in the morning, but it would be before now. There was no question he was already dead.

  It had been a long, cold night, he thought. It wasn’t so bad now—almost a different world. But he was tired, and some of the aches and pains were beginning to feel as if they might be more than that. He went over it in his mind again. He had waited to get a couple of miles away before he’d even looked for a car to hotwire. He’d found a two-year-old Pontiac parked on the street and taken it north on Route 87 to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Cheyenne had been the only choice, really, and that worried him a little—only two hours of driving time from Denver. But he’d have a long lead before anybody noticed it, where he’d left it. He was proud of that one, and it cancelled out the fact that Cheyenne was too obvious. It takes someone a day or so to decide that a car in a parking lot attached to a housing complex not only doesn’t belong to him, it doesn’t belong to anyone else either. Then it takes a day for somebody to get up the nerve to complain about it. The walk to the airport had taken some more time, but at least it had been too dark for anyone to see him.

  HE HAD MANAGED to get on the 7:00 A.M. flight from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City, and now he was on the noon plane to Las Vegas. He’d phoned in a reservation to Caesar’s Palace from Brigham Young Airport. The warm, clean air of the plane was a foretaste of what would be waiting for him in Las Vegas. And then, he told himself, it would all be over. No more fear, no more cold, and a chance to rest and take care of his wounds. This had been the worst trip he’d ever made. A nightmare. But at least the worry was over now—that had been the worst—the hot, physical fear, and the other part that knew you were going too fast, probably making mistakes because you were scared. That was all over now. Right now there were probably policemen searching for one or two young men who looked as though they’d been in a fight, but if they were, they were looking in the poorer sections of Denver, Colorado. They might be looking for a stolen Pontiac Grand Prix, brown, with a white vinyl top. If they were, they probably weren’t looking for it in an apartment complex in Cheyenne, Wyoming. None of these things had anything to do with the man who would be checking into Caesar’s Palace this afternoon, limping a little, and wearing dark glasses that hid a few bruises and a cut or two. A man who had suffered for taking a chance on a ski slope that was beyond his capacity wouldn’t raise much comment in Las Vegas. The inexhaustible supply of people of that sort was what paid the rent.

  THE ENGINES CUT BACK and the blunt nose of the giant airplane seemed to run head on into a more solid medium, slowing and falling at once. Hart looked over at Elizabeth, who was peering out the window over the craggy formations of the Rockies, her forehead pressed against the glass. There was something special, almost intoxicating, about being close to a beautiful woman. There was a space around her, a few inches, that belonged to her and seemed to be permeated with her smell and sound. And something else, like an electrical charge, that seemed to tug you closer to her, but set off a warning signal that reminded you not to let yourself drift any closer, because in a moment you would touch, brush a sleeve or a shoulder against a soft arm, and then it would be too late. You could never relax inside the charged zone that belonged to a beautiful woman unless there was some kind of prior understanding between you that made it all right to touch because you had touched before. He wondered if Elizabeth was aware of the tension too, sitting there thinking about it and wishing the plane would land so she wouldn’t be forced to think about it anymore, wouldn’t be held in enforced immobility while each of them hovered in suspension at the border of the other’s personal space.

  Beautiful women like this one were a special problem. The big, almond-shaped green eyes, the tiny waist, the impossibly thin wrists and long, graceful fingers made her seem as though she belonged to a superior species, smaller and more delicate than ordinary mortals and yet quicker. The impression might have been of an insubstantial creature, but it wasn’t that at all—what he felt was astonishment, almost as he might for a small antelope or an ocelot, an animal, a miraculous thing unconscious of what it was. He sensed in himself an overwhelming desire to touch, to verify that she was real and had the feel, the surface, and weight that his eyes told him she had.

  She turned her face to him. “I hope we can get through this quickly and get back to work.”

  Hart said, “Do you think the case is the real thing? I mean, we know it was no accident, but we also know Veasy probably didn’t buy the fertilizer himself. It seems to me the theory that it was a pro hinges on his being able to work with whatever he found.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Yes, there is that. But we don’t really know what we’re looking for, so anything we find out is to the good. The fact that it took a day for the local police to come up with the theory that it was dynamite, and another day to figure out that it wasn’t, and then it took another day for us to prove that the explosion was planned seems to me to show that whoever it was knew what he was doing.”

  “But that doesn’t make it much more likely that this is a case of the sort that your section would be interested in, does it?”

  “No, but I’ve got a couple of other things I’m checking on. The method isn’t what’s worrying me right now. I’m satisfied that he’s good enough at what he does. What’s missing is a reason for anybody to hire him to do it. And I still think he was hired. There’s nothing about Veasy to give me an excuse to believe it, but I do. People who just get mad at each other use guns or knives.”

  The airplane whistled down to meet the runway, then thumped to a stop before taxiing to the terminal. Elizabeth and Hart sat still while other passengers filed out, then slipped into the queue when there was an opening. As soon as they were in the carpeted tube that stretched from the airplane to the terminal Elizabeth spotted the man. He wasn’t obtrusive enough to come to the attention of the other passengers. He could have been an airline employee, but he wasn’t. He stood there beside a wall ignoring everyone who went by him, looking straight at Elizabeth. She said to Hart, “We’re being met.”

  “What?”

  She leaned into him so her face was close to his ear and said, “They’ve sent someone to meet us.”

  Hart said, “I see him. It’s good. Maybe we’ll get this over fast.”

  They walked up to him and he said, “Mr. Hart? Miss Waring? Come with me, please.” They followed him, and Elizabeth was surprised to see him open a side door at the end of the tube. Then they were in a small room with an entrance on the other side.

  “Right on time,” said the man. “I’m Pete Turnbull, FBI Denver.” He held out his hand for each of them to shake. Elizabeth studied him and decided he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but was trying by means of his neat, banker’s blue suit and the serious, competent look on his face to cross the line into the thirties. It made him look precocious, like a
n overeager junior executive.

  “Good to meet you,” said Hart. “What now?”

  “I’ll take you to the office, where they’ll fill you in on the case. Give me your baggage tags and I’ll arrange to have your suitcases catch up with you there.”

  They handed him the tags, and he disappeared through the other door for a second, then reappeared, smiling. “There’s a car waiting,” he said, and they followed him out the door and down a corridor to the main lobby.

  At the big swinging doors Elizabeth felt a gust of cold wind, so she wrapped her light-weight coat around herself tightly and plunged after Turnbull into the open air. In a second they had passed through it into the waiting car, which was parked in a loading zone with its motor running. Turnbull took the wheel and maneuvered them expertly into the circular drive and away.

  “What can you tell us about it?” asked Elizabeth.

  “The Senator?” said Turnbull. “Not much, really. You’ll get the full rundown. I’m not on it. What I know is he died this morning, early, and was found by his legislative assistant a short time later. That much is in the papers. The rest of it, if there is any more, they’re keeping quiet for now.”

  Elizabeth looked at Hart, who seemed to be deeper in thought than the case would warrant. Then he said, in a voice that was too casual for the expression on his face, “Do you know if they’ve ordered an autopsy?”

  “I haven’t heard. I suppose they have, though. I know about five agents were put on this case today, and they’re on overtime as of two hours ago, so they’d probably at least do that much.”

  Hart’s expression didn’t change. He sat back in the seat and said nothing.

  The federal office building was a relic of the era when politicians liked to remind themselves and their constituents that this was, after all, the U.S. government. The building was huge, with lots of Corinthian columns that weren’t there to support anything except the public’s awe and reverence.

  Elizabeth and Hart entered through the broad portal, expecting to see the place had been empty since five o’clock. It was true that the dozens of smoked-glass doors off the foyer seemed to be locked up for the night, but there were still people coming and going, and off to the left there were five men who were unmistakably reporters sitting on one of the massive oak benches.