Palindrome (20 page)

"Does he have alibis for those two occasions?"

"He's accounted for his whereabouts both nights, but I think there might be holes in his stories, if I can find them."

"Motive?"

"He knew the Fergusons through his ex-wife, says he got along fine with them. I haven't been able to turn up anything to the contrary, except from the ex-wife, who says he hates her so much he might have killed them just because they're her friends."

"Doesn't sound good. What about a motive for Schaefer?"

"That's a little better. Schaefer represented his ex-wife in the divorce. Every divorced man hates his ex-wife's lawyer."

Haynes grinned. "I can vouch for that. Schaefer could be easy to hate, too, if he was the opposition."

"Also, if the ex-wife's story is true, the guy has a history of violence. She says he put her in the hospital, nearly killed her."

"That would look good in court, but you gotta make a case, first."

Haynes put his feet up on the desk. "Who's the guy?"

"You don't want to know."

Haynes's eyebrows went up. "Oh, yes I do."

"Bake Ramsey."

"Oh, shit. I didn't want to know that."

"Don't say I didn't tell you."

"You talked to anybody else about this? I mean anybody?"

"No."

"Then for Christ's sake, don't! Now, tell me what you want; I know you want something I'm not going to want to give you."

"I want to go to LA. I've had some help from a buddy out there, but I can't ask him for much more. I need to punch through Ramsey's alibi."

"What about the alibi for the Ferguson killings? Why don't you punch through that instead?"

"I've already tried. My witness is stonewalling, but I hope she might come around later. In the meantime, Ramsey's a time bomb."

"A time bomb? You think he's going to kill somebody else?"

"The ex-wife says he's zonked out on steroids. I've done a little reading on the effects, and one of them is markedly increased aggression. To tell you the truth—and this is another hunch, of course—I think he might be capable of killing anybody who annoys him." He tossed a newspaper clipping onto the desk. Haynes read it all the way through, nodding.

"The ex-wife could be right, I guess. Is she in any danger?"

"I don't think so; he doesn't know where she is."

"Where is she?" Williams shook his head ruefully. "I don't know, either. She wouldn't tell me, and our new telephone equipment wouldn't give us her number when she was on the line. The tech people think she was talking from a car phone, and I can't find a current address for her in Atlanta."

"Okay," Haynes said, taking his feet down and putting his elbows on his desk, "let's sum up. You think you've got two murders, two thousand miles apart, one of which belongs to another police department; your initial break is from a very possibly disgruntled ex-wife; you've got a practically nonexistent motive in the Ferguson case, and a so-so motive in the Schaefer case; you've got geographic opportunity in both cases, but your suspect has alibis for both; you've got no witnesses or physical evidence in either case; and your suspect is one of the most famous men in Atlanta, and the media would go bonkers if even a whiff of this reaches them. Does that about cover it?"

"Pretty much." Haynes began to look uncomfortable.

"Lee, I didn't want to bring this up, but I think it bears on what we're talking about."

"Yeah?"

"On the child murders case awhile back, you made some bad guesses, didn't you?"

Williams's ears burned. It was patently true that he had guessed wrong; a man had been convicted. But it was the first time his captain had brought it up. "I guess you could say that," he replied finally.

"You pushed too hard on your hunches when everybody else knew we had our man. I'll tell you the truth, Lee, that's why you don't have a partner at the moment. The attitude around here—I think it's unjustified—but the attitude is that nobody wants to be made to look bad by a guy who depends too much on hunches. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah, Cap, I understand it." It killed him to admit it, though.

"And now you want to go to LA to poke around. I expect you know that would involve a fax from me to the LA chief of detectives, letting him know I've got a man on his turf, and, of course, a copy of that would have to go to our own beloved chief, one of whose personal bugaboos is unnecessary travel during investigations."

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Well, I have to." Haynes stared at the ceiling. "Looking at it as a detective, which I no longer am, of course, I'd say you've got a pretty good hunch."

Williams leaned forward. "Thank you, Ed."

"Then again, looking at it as the commander of the homicide squad, which I currently am, and which I would like to stay, I'd say I want something more from you."

"Such as?"

"A single piece of evidence; a collapsed alibi; another murder of somebody else Ramsey knows, who was breathing the same air at the time of expiration."

"And what if he does kill somebody else, Cap? How're you going to feel then, after what I've told you?"

Haynes stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. "You haven't told me a thing, Lee. This was just an informal chat about a hypothetical case. Have a nice day."

Williams got up and walked out of the office.

"Lee?" Williams stopped and turned. "If there's room on some of your plastic for an airline ticket, and you want to take a couple of vacation days on the West Coast, well, who's to stop you? And then, if you can get a clean collar out of your little vacation, I might see my way clear to reimburse you out of discretionary funds."

Williams grinned from ear to ear. Now he had a chance—a slim one, maybe, but a chance—to pull himself out of this hole with his colleagues. He needed one heavy bust, and this could be it.

CHAPTER 30

Liz walked down the path toward the graveyard, and, as she approached, the murmur of voices reached her through the trees. There was the scrape of a tool on earth. The disinterment had begun. She had expected to see somebody knee deep in a grave, shoveling for all he was worth—a daylight version of a scene from some old horror movie. Instead, she found Dr. Blaylock and his students on their knees, scraping at the earth with small tools and their hands. Blaylock looked up, saw her approaching, and rose to meet her. "I didn't mean to disturb you, Doctor," she said. "I just wanted to watch for a bit."

"You're not disturbing me, Miss Barwick," he said. "In fact, I wanted to speak with you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I understand that there's a black man on the island who is over a hundred years old."

"That's right; his name is Buck Moses."

"It occurs to me that it might be useful to speak with him. An old retainer like that who's probably attended a lot of family burials—maybe even dug a few graves—might tell us something about the materials the coffins were made of."

"Perhaps he might," she agreed.

"We don't have a vehicle here, and I wonder if I might intrude on your good nature to the extent of asking you to see Mr. Moses and, perhaps, bring him here to talk to me."

"I'll be happy to, Dr. Blaylock," she said. "I'll drive up to the old slave settlement, but I should tell you that Buck could be just about anywhere on the island. He has an old pickup truck, and he gets around."

"Well, perhaps you could leave him a note."

"I'm not even sure he reads. Let's leave it this way: I'll go up there now, and if I'm not back in an hour, just assume I didn't find him. He'll turn up eventually, though."

"That's very kind of you."

Liz indicated the digging. "You're making delicate work of this, I see."

"Oh, we're approaching this as an archaeological dig—partly because of the site's age, and partly so my students can have the experience. Mr. Drummond was interested in having it done that way, too. If he had simply wanted the graves moved, a few careful men with shovels could have done the job. This graveyard goes back to the eighteenth century, at least; Mr. Drummond tells me the site was an old Indian burying ground before that, so there's no telling what we'll turn up." He frowned. "We'd be moving a bit faster if my toolboxes hadn't disappeared the other night."

"Dr. Blaylock," a girl called out.

Liz and the doctor turned to see one of the students holding up a broken clay pipe. "You see what I mean?" The doctor smiled. "That will make their day." He returned to the digging.

Liz got back into her Jeep and drove up the north-south road that bisected the island. She took the fork for the slave settlement, and, shortly, pulled up before the church and stopped. "Buck?" she called out. "Buck Moses?" She was greeted with silence. She walked among the old frame cottages, peering into a window here and there. All were empty but Buck's, which he shared with his grandson. She opened the front door of the church and stepped in. It was a tiny building, with a few benches and a rudely constructed pulpit.

It could never have held more than twenty people, even if most of them stood. Did Buck Moses read? There was no way of knowing, but she decided to leave a note anyway. She found a pad and pencil in the Jeep, wrote down her message, and walked to Buck's little house. She was looking for a way to wedge the note in the door, when she leaned on it and it swung open. She put her head inside. "Buck?" The cabin was neatly kept, with a wood stove and an old settee. In back there was a bedroom. As Liz was about to close the door, her eye fell on two objects resting near the stove. On the floor, partly behind a stack of wood, were two large, gray, metal toolboxes. She stepped back and closed the door, and, as she did, James Moses rode slowly into the clearing on a large horse. He threw a leg over the saddle and slid down. "Hey, Miz Elizabeth," he said, smiling handsomely. "You come to see us?"

"I came to see your grandfather," Liz said, holding up the paper. "Will you give him a note for me?"

"Sure, I will."

"Dr. Blaylock wants to talk to him down at the Drummond family cemetery at Dungeness, wants to ask him about some of the burials." James's smile disappeared. "Granddaddy ain't going down there," he said. "He don't hold with messing up that graveyard; he told me so."

"Oh. Well, I said I'd pass on the message, and I have." She turned toward the Jeep, then stopped. "James, did you have anything to do with scaring those college kids down at their campsite the other night?" James poked at something on the ground with a toe. "Grand-daddy says those folks got no right poking 'round that graveyard, says there's spirits going to be mad about it. Maybe it was the spirits."

"Well, Dr. Blaylock has been missing two toolboxes since that night. There was nothing much of value in them, just things he needs to do his work."

"Yes, ma'am," James said. "I heard about that."

"Do you know anything about it?" she asked gently.

"You'd have to talk to my granddaddy about that," James said, and he didn't seem inclined to say more.

"I see," Liz said.

"Miz Elizabeth," James said slowly, "Granddaddy says things going to change around here soon; says a big wind coming, going to change everything." He looked back at the ground. "I think he don't want it to change while he's still alive. I think he wants to keep it like it is right now."

"Well, that's understandable," Liz said. "Still, everything changes sooner or later."

"He's worried about it," James said. "I haven't seen him worried about much before, but he's worried about this, keeps talking about it."

"Old people are like that, James," she said. "They don't want things to change. They want them to be the way they've always been. Young people like you welcome change, but as you get older, it doesn't seem so welcome. I think I've come to understand how your grandfather and your... Mr. Angus feel about the island, how they want to protect it. But there's not really much they can do about it. They're both very old men, and their time will come soon. You and Germaine and the twins will have to protect the island, then."

"I guess that's the natural way," James said.

Then he looked up at her, worried. "But I don't think natural changes is what Granddaddy's talking about. He thinks something's going to happen here soon, and he don't like it. I'm scared."

Liz was nonplussed. "Well, James, if something happens, we'll just have to do the best we can, and I think that might be pretty good, don't you?"

The boy smiled again, a little. "Yes, ma'am, I think it might."

Liz said good-bye, climbed into the Jeep, and started back toward Stafford Beach Cottage. She cut across the island toward to drive across the earthen track that separated the lake from a smaller pond, she looked ahead of her and stopped. A man's hand protruded from the high grass on the lake's shore. She wouldn't have seen it, except for the sunlight reflecting from a gold Rolex watch on the wrist. She watched the hand to see if it moved. It did not. She got out of the Jeep, and, to keep her courage up, walked quickly toward where the man lay. She could see none of him because of the grass. She stopped, and, taking a deep breath, dug in her heels, took hold of the wrist, and pulled hard, to get him into the road. To first her surprise, and then her horror, she sat down hard in the roadway. In her lap was a man's arm, brutally severed, well above the elbow.

CHAPTER 31

Lee Williams got off the airplane at LAX in a state of some excitement.

He had not traveled a great deal—New York once, Florida a few times—and here he was in what he, like many first-time visitors, thought of as Hollywood. He quickly discovered that there was nothing very glamorous about Los Angeles International Airport. It was like airports anywhere, albeit with palm trees, and it seemed not as big as Atlanta's Hartsfield International. While he waited for his bag he checked in with Avis for the car he had reserved. "Wait outside on the curb for the bus," the woman explained; then he asked for and got directions to West Hollywood.

Getting a rental car in Hollywood turned out to be a pain in the ass. He waited a considerable time for the bus, then rode some distance to a huge parking lot. Eventually, the bus stopped behind his Chevette. He tossed his bag in the backseat, showed his rental contract to a guard at the gate, and began to find out how big Los Angeles is. Checking the line drawn on his map, he made his way, gawking, to West Hollywood. He was surprised at how few tall buildings there were and how flat it was until he began to climb into the hills. The suite hotel, Le Parc, was tucked away on a side street, and in a few minutes he was checked into a living room with a kitchenette in one corner, a bedroom, and a bath.