Walk a Black Wind (20 page)

She told me. It wasn't too far from the Crawford house.

“He's my father,” she said. “I want to talk to him, for Francesca. It was important to her.”

I couldn't tell her the truth, no, she'd find out soon enough. “What was important to Francesca was a man eighteen years ago. A man and his life. You can still have that life, and he'd want you to—his life back at Pine River. Go there if you want your father. That's where he really is.”

Paul Two Bears spoke from the doorway. “He's right. That man wasn't my uncle. Even his eyes are a lie.”

She stood there torn between what we said, and the need to know her real father at least for an instant. I had no time to wait. I didn't know what Andera had heard, or thought he had heard. I couldn't be sure who his last victim was to be.

I ran for my car.

Anthony Sasser's house was smaller than the Crawford's, farther back from the road, and dark. There was no light in it anywhere, and the green Cadillac was not there. Neither was any other car Katje Crawford might have come in, or John Andera.

I drove on to the Crawford mansion. Martin Crawford was in the living room when the maid let me in. His face looked like he had lost fifty pounds in the last hours. Old Mrs. Van Hoek sat in a chair as if she were trying to stay unseen. I pulled out my big pistol. I aimed it at Crawford.

“Hand me your gun,” I said to Crawford. “By the barrel.”

He didn't protest. I pocketed the Colt Agent.

“Is he here?” I said. “Sasser?”

“No. He wasn't at his house or his office. I tried his club, too. Nowhere. Katje isn't back, either. Is Felicia—?”

“She's okay,” I said, and told him the whole thing fast.

He sat down. “My God. Ralph … John Andera, you say? He killed Francesca? His own … My God.”

“He's been around here in the background for years. He says he saw you, and you saw him. You never knew?”

“I never saw anyone like Ralph Blackwind, no! I thought he was dead, I never considered if anyone could be Ralph. He was watching, and then …?”

I turned to the old woman, Mrs. Van Hoek. “Your husband knew Blackwind was alive. Did you know?”

The old woman shrank away from me in her chair. She watched Martin Crawford.

“Tell him what he wants to know, Mother,” Crawford said.

Her eyes were blank. “I didn't know. Emil always liked Ralph Blackwind, even after Ralph shot him.”

“Your husband told Francesca something. That Blackwind was alive, yes, but what else?”

“I don't know,” Mrs. Van Hoek said.

“He almost died, he knew Blackwind was alive, yet he never told. He protected an escaped murderer who'd shot him, tried to kidnap Katje and the girls, nearly killed them? Why?” I said. “Tell me just what did happen that night eighteen years ago.”

The old woman shook her head, no. She was afraid.

“Tell him,” Martin Crawford said from his chair.

When she spoke then, it was like a robot. “We were in the old house. Ralph came. He had guns. He was violent, in a rage. Katje tried to run away. Ralph shot everywhere, with both his guns. A pistol and a submachine gun. One in each hand. He smashed the living room mirror, the lamps, the windows. Emil pushed me down behind a couch. He lay there with me. Katje said she would go with Ralph. She got the children. Ralph made us stay down on the floor out of sight. We didn't move, Emil and I. They all went out. We heard them drive away. Emil got up from behind the couch. We heard their car stop at the end of the street. Ralph ran back. Emil started to the door. Ralph shot him through the broken window. Emil was badly hurt. A few moments later their car drove away and was gone. Martin came home ten minutes later. He stopped Emil's bleeding, got a doctor, called the police. They caught Ralph in Utica. Katje had managed to call the police while Ralph was asleep.”

She finished it there. I imagined the violent scene that night—Blackwind half-crazy, firing a submachine gun with one hand, a pistol with the other. Smashing the house in his rage.

“Katje called?” I said. “She turned him in to the police.”

“What else could she do? He was violent, dangerous,” Crawford said from his chair.

I watched him. “Is that how it happened, Crawford? Did she tell it exactly?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I arrived ten minutes later.”

“Did you?” I said. “Or maybe ten minutes earlier?”

He said, “No. They were gone when I got there. Only the Van Hoeks were there, Emil bleeding on the floor.”

“Almost dead,” I said. “Yet he learned later that Blackwind was still alive, had made his escape from prison, and he never told anyone. Why? Why protect a man who'd almost killed him?”

Crawford shook his head. “I don't know, Fortune.”

“You're sure you weren't there earlier, Crawford? What did ballistics say about the bullets that shot Emil Van Hoek?”

“From Ralph Blackwind's pistol. It was an 8-mm Nambu he'd picked up in North Korea. No mistake possible, a rare gun here. There wasn't another one in Dresden, I don't think.”

“His pistol?” I said. “Not the submachine gun?”

“No.”

I said, “You told the story just that way at the trial? Emil Van Hoek, and Mrs. Van Hoek there, told the story?”

“They weren't at the trial. There was no need. Emil was too sick. Katje testified, and Blackwind admitted going crazy, shooting up the house. The Van Hoeks gave depositions.”

“Depositions?” I said. “Where would Sasser and Katje be, Crawford? Think? Where could Sasser be now?”

“I don't know,” he said, squeezed his hands together in that chair. “I've thought, but I can't—”

Old Mrs. Van Hoek said, “She meets with Sasser at the lodge on Black Mountain Lake. Abram Zaremba's lodge. She goes there to him sometimes.”

Crawford began to say something, but I didn't wait. I ran out to my car. The rain had stopped now. I drove toward Black Mountain Lake and the million-dollar project that, in one way, had started the whole tragedy. The project, and Joel Pender's drunken stupidity. In one way they had started it all, but in reality it had begun a long time ago when a young Indian soldier married a patroon girl momentarily rejecting her heritage and future for passion. A moment that she had regretted, and started the whole inexorable chain of violence.

Black Mountain Lake glittered darkly like the surface of Pluto with its methane ocean. There was light in the lodge at the end of the county-built private road. I saw the three cars. One was Anthony Sasser's green Cadillac. I drew my gun, and slipped up to a window of the lodge. I knew who the third car had to belong to. Maybe I wasn't too late. But I was.

Through the window I saw a large, rustic room. Katje Crawford stood against a far wall in her red slack suit, her handbag held in both hands before her like a shield. John Andera faced her some ten feet away with his gun in his hand. They didn't seem to be speaking, just looking at each other with closed faces, the death of their daughter, and eighteen years, between them.

Something more lay between them, too. Something real, physical. The body of Anthony Sasser.

Sasser lay on his back in a pool of blood, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling with surprise and fear. He was dead, John Andera knew how to kill, did not miss.

I slipped around to the front door. It was open. I went inside silently. John Andera heard me when I was twenty feet away in the rustic room, and half behind him to his left.

“I've got my gun, Andera,” I said.

I hoped my voice wasn't shaking. I couldn't play with him. If he moved, I'd have to shoot. If I gave him one chance, I was as good as dead.

His eyes looked toward me.

27.

John Andera looked toward me, and then back at Katje Crawford, and let his gun drop away from him with a small toss. Too dead inside now to even try to run and end it all his own way if that meant more struggle. My stomach relaxed. I went limp. I hadn't been so sure I was any match for him even with my gun and the advantage.

“Shoot him,” Katje Crawford said. “He's a murderer ten times over. Shoot him now.”

“I'll take him in,” I said.

“He'll fool you,” she said. “He shot Tony in cold blood.”

Andera said, “Sasser admitted it, Fortune. He was scared, he talked. He told Zaremba that Francesca had really seen my face when I killed Leland, that she was working with the police, that she knew Leland had been killed to protect the Black Mountain Lake project. He made Zaremba send me to kill Fran.”

His dead eyes turned toward Katje Crawford. She still stood against the wall in that red slack suit, fear and a kind of hate on her face.

“I didn't know it was Francesca,” Andera said to her. “I didn't recognize her. I killed those who made me do it.”

Katje Crawford opened her handbag and took out a cigarette. Her hands shook, she could barely light the cigarette. Her eyes seemed hypnotized by John Andera's face, watching only him.

I said, “Did Sasser tell you why he did it, Andera?”

Katje Crawford looked at me now. The look was one of sheer terror.

“What?” John Andera said.

“Did Sasser tell you why he told Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous? It was all a lie. Francesca didn't see your face when you killed Leland, she couldn't identify you. She wasn't holding anything back, she had no evidence against you or Zaremba. All she was doing was looking for her real father. Nothing else. So what reason did Sasser have to lie to Zaremba and get her killed?”

It was so silent in that big lodge room that I could hear the cars on the distant county highway, and the slow drip of the last drops of the stopped rain from the trees outside.

Andera said, “He had his reasons, Fortune. He did it. He told me he did it.”

“He did it,” I said. “The question is why?”

Katje Crawford said, “He was sure Francesca knew too much. He told me that.”

She smoked, the cigarette trembling in her frightened hand like a rabbit shivering in the open as a fox stalked. I spoke to John Andera.

“I told Katje there that Sasser had talked to Francesca in New York. You heard me tell her tonight, didn't you, Andera? You were outside the Crawford house listening. I told her, and she came running to Sasser. Why? They were lovers, Andera. She was tossing over Crawford, as she tossed you over twenty years ago. But she didn't come here just to warn Sasser.”

Katje Crawford said, “Stop it, Fortune.”

I said, “All Francesca was doing was looking for her real father. That's all. The rest was lies, a smoke screen set up by Sasser—and by Katje.”

I turned to face Katje Crawford. “You told Sasser to lie to Zaremba and have Francesca killed.”

She shook her head sharply. “You're wrong. She was my daughter. You're terribly wrong.”

“A daughter you were never close to, always hated. Both the twins, really, because they were as much a part of Blackwind as they were of you. But Francesca mostly because she was most like her real father, because she sensed your hate of her, your fear. Since she was a little girl she was different, against you, sensed the wall between you. A wall of hate and fear because you've always been afraid Blackwind would someday come back. You never believed he died in that escape. Death, Katje, that's what you're afraid of. The fear of being killed if Blackwind ever found out the real truth.”

Katje Crawford smoked, drew the smoke deep into her lungs. John Andera watched her. I moved closer to him.

“After Francesca left home,” I said, “Katje found out what old Emil Van Hoek had told Francesca. We'll never know if she killed old Van Hoek, too, or if he just died under the strain. A little of both, maybe. But, whatever, Katje was terrified of what would happen if Francesca got to you and told you what she had learned from Emil Van Hoek.

“You see, she
had
recognized you that time you went to Sasser about the contract to kill Leland. I don't know how, but she did. Then Francesca went looking for you, and Katje had to stop her. She got Sasser to locate Francesca, and he did. Then she had him tell Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous, that Zaremba had to stop her. What Katje and Sasser hadn't expected was that Zaremba would send you to kill your own daughter! Chance, accident, call it fate again.

“Then I showed up hired by someone. They had to know who hired me. Sasser tailed me to find out, and spotted you that morning in front of my office. He knew who you were, and what you were, and what had happened. He knew you were trying to find out who had made you kill Francesca, so he tried to shoot you, but got me instead. Then you killed Zaremba, and they really panicked. They had set Francesca up for murder, you had killed her, and now you were after them. They didn't dare risk
me
finding it all out, so Katje killed Carl Gans who could have led me to the truth. Only he lived just too long. He told me enough.”

Andera said, “What could Francesca have told me?”

I looked at Katje Crawford. It was, after all, her story. She said nothing, stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray as if unaware of what she was doing. A reflex action, neat and orderly, a well-mannered woman. Andera was close to me now, his false blue eyes staring into my face, waiting.

I shrugged. “That you didn't shoot Emil Van Hoek back there eighteen years ago. The one crime you couldn't evade. The charge that sent you to prison and ruined your life, and you never did it. You shot up that room at random. Emil Van Hoek fell behind the couch. You didn't see him again, did you? You left with Katje and the children. You drove off. But you stopped at the end of the street, and—”

Andera said, “Katje ran back. She said she had dropped some medicine the kids had to have. She ran back, I waited in the car. I had the kids, they were crying, the motor was running, I—”

“You were distracted, not thinking about gunshots. The kids were noisy, a Nambu makes little noise. Katje had your pistol with her, easy to grab it in the confusion, you had put down the guns to drive. Later, at the trial, you assumed you'd hit old Van Hoek in that first volley of wild shots in the room. Van Hoek never came to court. But he knew who had shot him.”