Death at King Arthur's Court (19 page)

Rocco began to look interested. ‘Does his paper route include the police station?'

‘No, it doesn't. But he often substitutes for the delivery girl who has that route.'

‘And he has a key to the children's room?' Lyon asked.

‘Of course, but he's completely trust—What are you suggesting?'

‘I think we had better talk to your son,' Rocco said.

The New England formality that was this woman's protective mantle against the world stiffened at the faintest suggestion of any wrongdoing by her son. Her body imperceptibly tensed as her knees pressed firmly together. ‘He has chores to do,' was her cool reply.

Rocco sounded tired. ‘I think today's first chore is to speak with me.'

‘I think not, Chief Herbert. My son is not involved in any criminal activity, and I do not want him hounded and frightened.'

‘I didn't say it was criminal, Mrs Baxter. Now, are you going to let me talk with him or do I have to have him picked up by a patrol car?'

Little Ralph Baxter was nearly as neat as Phyllis Baxter. He sat rigidly on the couch in the small living room next to his mother. He was a smallish, tow-headed, twelve-year-old, and appeared mildly anxious as he sensed the tenseness transmitted by his mother.

Phyllis Baxter put her hand over her son's. ‘You must tell Chief Herbert exactly what you've been doing, Ralphie.'

‘I haven't done anything wrong, Mom.'

‘Did you go to the library this morning and send a message on the fax machine?' Rocco asked.

‘I was in school this morning,' was the too quick response.

‘During your morning paper route you had to ride your bike past the library. You went inside using your own key and sent a message.'

‘No, sir,' was the prompt and polite response.

Phyllis Baxter abruptly stood and stepped in front of her son as if to shield him from further attack. It was the simple and reflexive act of an animal mother protecting her young. ‘All right, that's it. You can't badger my son any further. He told you he didn't do anything.'

‘Tell them about the fingerprints on the fax machine, Rocco,' Lyon said. It was a necessary lie at this juncture.

Ralphie Baxter blanched as Rocco solemnly spoke. ‘I'm afraid we'll have to take him down to the station and book him in order to get his prints. He shouldn't be in the juvenile detention center for more than a week or two … unless the social workers step in, and you know how they are.'

The woman's fingers curled into tight fists that pressed fearfully against her face. ‘No,' was her nearly inaudible response.

Lyon looked at the stricken young boy and nodded. The look and gesture were command enough.

‘I should have said something when they were asking around school,' Ralphie said. ‘I was afraid they'd want me to give the money back. I knew something was bad wrong cuz he was paying me so much for hardly doing anything. I figured something was probably wrong with what I was doing, even though he said it was a practical joke.'

‘What were you doing, Ralphie?' Rocco asked gently.

‘Once I delivered an envelope to police headquarters, and early this morning I sneaked into the library and sent a fax. He paid me twenty dollars each time. He said it was a joke he was pulling on some people. But I knew something was wrong.'

‘Tell me,' Rocco said. ‘Exactly how did you meet this man?'

On the last stop of his afternoon paper route, Ralphie Baxter delivered four copies of the
Middleburg Press
to the Acorn Motel. His daily routine, after he dropped the papers off at the motel office, was to buy a Pepsi from the machine in the center stairwell. Several days ago he had dropped coins in the machine, waited for the can to thunk to a stop at the end of the chute, and then popped its top. He was startled by a voice from the stairs behind him and nearly dropped the cold can.

‘Hey, kid,' the voice from the man halfway down the stairs said. ‘You want to earn a couple of bucks?'

He could only see the bottom half of the man on the stairs. ‘I got a paper route.'

‘I'm talking easy money, kid.'

Ralphie glanced at his bike leaning against the wall not five feet away, and beyond that he could see the motel office only a few feet away. His mother had repeatedly warned him about men who offered money or gifts for small favors. He knew he was supposed to run away and call the police, or at least pedal quickly home or to the library on his ten-speed.

A twenty-dollar bill fluttered down the stairs and gently landed on the concrete floor near Ralphie's feet. ‘That's for doing practically nothing, kid. I want you to deliver a letter for me. Simple enough? It's a joke I'm pulling.'

‘That's all?'

‘Promise.' A hand appeared and flicked an envelope at Ralphie's feet. When he picked it up he saw that it was addressed to the Murphysville Police Department.

‘What do I have to do?'

‘Take it to the cops and leave it at the front desk. Don't talk to anyone. When you come back tomorrow we may have another little well-paying errand for you. This is all top-secret joke stuff, you know? So keep it quiet or the money stops.'

‘I don't have to do anything else?'

‘Nothing.'

It seemed harmless enough. Ralphie stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. After all, the letter was going to the police station, so what could be wrong with that?

The request to send the fax had been handled the same way.

It was after the first delivery that Ralphie's Junior Achievement mind began to churn. His timid suggestion to his benefactor concerning increased distribution of his ‘joke' was accepted readily with a reward payment of an additional twenty. The first fax message had been easy, and the man at the motel promised that there might be others, each one bearing an additional twenty.

Rocco Herbert slouched in the passenger side of the Dodge pickup and cleaned the lens of his binoculars with his shirt tail. ‘I am probably the only peace officer in the entire country whose unmarked vehicle is a twelve-year-old borrowed pickup with a rusted body carrying a hot-air balloon.'

‘Don't you think you should call Norbie and let him bring a state police SWAT team out here?' Lyon said. ‘This guy is very dangerous.'

‘Let's see what we're up against first,' Rocco replied as he raised the glasses and swept the second tier of the Acorn Motel.

‘When do you get the ballistics results on Ernest's rifle?'

‘We don't,' Rocco responded without removing his eyes from the lens.

‘Wrong caliber?'

‘When I got back to headquarters the gun wasn't in the car.'

‘Ernest took it while the ladder was getting me down?'

‘He denies it and says a small crowd gathered to watch the festivities and anyone could have taken it. He says he's going to sue me for the cost of the rifle. As if I didn't have enough problems. It probably won't make any difference if this is the guy we want.'

‘What do you see?' Lyon asked as Rocco continued staring at the motel's upper units.

‘Not a damn thing.'

‘Maybe he's not here,' Lyon said.

‘According to the motel manager, there's only three units that have been rented continuously this week. Two of those rooms are occupied by single mothers with children, whose charges are paid by the welfare department. The third is rented to what he calls a weird guy who hardly ever goes out. He checked in the night before Morgan was killed.'

‘That sounds solid,' Lyon said.

‘Uh huh,' Rocco replied. He swept the upper tier of the motel again with the binoculars. ‘Now, let's figure out how we're going to take this guy.'

The intention was to blow the bitch to hell. It must be certain that there would be enough high explosives in the bomb to completely destroy the car. The initial explosion would disintegrate the vehicle into twisted metal shards. Hopefully there would be enough additional force for her body to be hurled a hundred feet. That little involuntary aerial event would guarantee that there was no possibility of her survival.

There were no more risks to be taken. Care and protection were the new bywords. A remote bomb, unsatisfactory as it might be, would have to suffice.

The device was a model of simplicity, which made it easy to construct. The dynamite was stolen from the construction site next to the Wentworths' home. The detonating caps had been purchased out of state. The complete bundle would be wrapped in heavy tape and inserted under her car hood, where it would be wired to the starter motor. When the bitch turned the ignition, the car battery would send a spark of electricity to the starter motor and ignite the cap. The resulting explosion would flip off the hood and push the engine block back through the fire wall into the lap of the driver. Her body would be flung back through the rear of the car. There should be sufficient force to expel her either through the shattered rear window or right through the car roof. Her body would pinwheel through the air in a disjointed awkward dance until it fell to the ground with all the grace of a dead bird.

It would be a glorious sight. Pity that it would not be seen.

Lyon Wentworth sometimes viewed terrain in a military manner. This habit annoyed him for two reasons: his brief military career had been in intelligence and not as a line officer, and he preferred to avoid war-like emotional baggage. Nevertheless, the trait often popped up unbidden and he found himself considering fields of fire, possible avenues of concealment, and potential flanking movements. As he sat in his rusting pickup, next to an absorbed Rocco Herbert, he found himself viewing their objective in such a manner.

The Acorn Motel was set twenty yards back from the highway and built in an L which partially surrounded a swimming pool and patio. Bright yellow stucco disguised cement-block construction. A large neon Acorn on the roof also welcomed salesmen. The second tier of rooms was reached by a central stairwell whose enclosure contained an ice machine and soft-drink dispenser.

The room nearest the top of the center stairs was occupied by a man identified by the manager as, ‘the guy who paid cash for a week in advance and talks in twenty-five dollar words.'

‘You'll want marksmen deployed on the roof and also positioned over by those trees,' Lyon said. ‘You'll need men covering the front and rear, and hopefully you can infiltrate the surrounding units and clear the area. When everyone's in place, there are two ways to go in. Either have men repel off the roof and swing through the unit's front picture window, or else use stun grenades followed by a frontal assault behind a battering ram. A command post can be set up in an unmarked van parked down the highway around the curve, and—'

‘Nope,' Rocco said sharply to cut him off.

‘You want your command post in the motel office?'

‘Nope means no troops, I'm taking this guy myself.'

‘That's only not necessary, it's poor police procedure, and happens to be against your own back-up rules. This guy may be a trained terrorist, which means that you are around the bend if you consider anything less than a maximum effort.'

‘You'll cover me,' Rocco said. ‘That should be adequate.' He reached under the seat to retrieve the .12-gauge shotgun he'd placed there when they'd changed vehicles. He worked the pump to throw a shell into the chamber. ‘You don't even have to aim.' he said. ‘So we won't need your vaunted marksman's eye. Try and not blow away any civilians or me when I'm in your line of fire.'

Lyon reluctantly grasped the weapon by its pistol grip. ‘I'm not sure about the legality of this.'

‘If we succeed, no one will ask,' Rocco said. ‘If we don't, it won't really matter to either of us.'

‘That instills a great deal of confidence in me,' Lyon said.

They drove the pickup two hundred yards further down the highway to the entrance of a graveled road. Another quarter of a mile down the side road and they started across a fallow field with the truck groaning and creaking at each jounce of the uneven surface. They parked behind an unused barn near the motel and ran in a crouch to the side of the building's windowless wall.

Rocco pressed against the stucco as he slowly worked his way toward the rear of the units. When he reached the end of the building, he knelt on one knee to peer around the corner. He motioned for Lyon to join him and whispered, ‘It's clear. We're going up the stairs. The unit next to his is vacant and I have a master key. I'm going in that way and will break through the connecting door. You'll cover the front of his room and block any escape route from that direction.'

‘What about windows?'

‘There's only two. A small one in the bathroom at the rear, but it's too small for anyone to squeeze through. The second is the picture window with the drawn drapes next to the front door. You'll be able to cover both the door and window.'

Lyon nodded. ‘Got it.'

‘OK. In exactly four minutes I break through the connecting door.' Rocco looked at the wide diver's watch strapped to his wrist. ‘At the mark the time is exactly—'

‘I'm not wearing a watch,' Lyon said.

‘Damn it, Wentworth! How am I going to make a raid if you can't synchronize your watch with me?'

‘To be honest, Rocco, when I left the house this morning I didn't exactly dress for an attack against a Brother of Beelzebub.'

Rocco sighed. ‘We'll have to make do. I'll break through in three minutes. Count it off mentally or something. Just be at that front door when I need you.'

Lyon nodded again as Rocco left. He waited for what he estimated to be a minute and a half and then rushed around the corner and climbed the steps two at a time. At the top of the landing he pressed against the wall in the narrow space between the unit's front door and the wide picture window with its drawn drapes. He continued his internal count while tightly gripping the shotgun.