Palindrome

CHAPTER 41

Williams sat down across the desk from Haynes. His captain gazed impassively at him. There was no hint of either anger or sympathy in his eyes. "All right, let's go over it again," he said. "From square one. Start with Schaefer."

"I can prove by two witnesses, one of them a Los Angeles policewoman, that Ramsey was in the Beverly Hills Hotel when Albert Schaefer was drowned in their swimming pool."

"That's opportunity," the captain said. "Motive?"

"He killed Schaefer because he hated his guts. Schaefer represented Ramsey's ex-wife in the divorce proceedings, and Schaefer always got big settlements for his clients. I asked around."

"Motive," the captain said. "Now the Fergusons."

"Ramsey was checked in to Piedmont Hospital for knee surgery at the time the Fergusons died. He screwed the night nurse, and I think she covered for him, or at least failed to check on him, so that he was able to leave the hospital in the middle of the night, walk or drive to the Fergusons', which was nearby, and do the deed."

"Opportunity, maybe. Motive?"

"I'm damned if I know. The ex-wife didn't shed any light on that when she phoned, and I haven't been able to find her. It's hard to believe, but all of her friends say they don't know where she is, and I believe them."

"So we're shaky on the Fergusons, even in theory."

"I'm afraid so."

"The motive for Mary Alice Taylor?"

"I talked to her about the night she met Ramsey, and she struck me as evasive. I warned her not to tell Ramsey we'd talked, but I think she did. He killed her because he knew she could blow his alibi for the Fergusons."

"Why did he torture her?"

"To find out what she'd told me. She would have denied telling me anything, of course, since she didn't, but he obviously didn't believe her."

"And Ramsey flew up here from Miami and back in the middle of the night to kill her?"

"Right. He must have known the guy whose body we found. We haven't been able to make a connection, yet, but they could have met at some bar or something. Ramsey must know thousands of people. This airport in Florida is perfect; it's not attended twenty-four hours a day, so the guy could pick up Ramsey there and deliver him back, all in the wee hours. We know the airplane came to Dekalb-Peachtree because it took on fuel there-the refueler saw only the pilot; we just can't place Ramsey on the plane; it was clean."

The captain leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. "It's all perfectly plausible," he said. "But we can't prove any of it. We'll just have to wait until he kills somebody else and hope he makes a mistake."

"I don't think he's going to kill anybody else," Williams said.

"Why not? He seems to enjoy it."

"Because there isn't anybody else to kill. He's had reasons for killing five people, but now he's home free. Why should he kill anybody else?"

"Unless…" The captain took his feet down and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. "Oh, boy, I think I just had a flash."

"Tell me."

"The wife."

"You think he wants to kill the wife?"

"Why else is she taking so much trouble to cover her tracks? She hasn't told a single friend where she's gone-you said that. Why? She's afraid Ramsey will find her, that's why."

"That makes sense," Williams admitted.

"Not only does it make sense, it gives us a motive for the Fergusons and a better motive for Schaefer."

"I don't get it, Cap."

"They knew where Elizabeth Barwick is! Christ, she had to tell somebody. Who better than her lawyer and her publisher?"

"But why all three of them?"

"Maybe Schaefer wouldn't tell him. He was a gutsy little guy, Al was."

"So he tried to find out from the Fergusons?"

"From Raymond, at least. Maybe he killed the wife just because she was there."

"He threatened the wife to get the husband to tell him," Williams said, excited now.

"That had to be the way it was. So now Ramsey knows where his ex-wife is?"

"Maybe. Or, on the other hand, maybe the Fergusons didn't tell him, either."

"No, I don't believe that. Ferguson would have talked to protect his wife."

"I think you're right. I also think you'd better find Elizabeth Barwick in a hurry, or she's going to be real dead real soon."

"If she's not already," Williams said.

"We'd have heard about it, wherever she is."

"But she could be anywhere. She could be in Paris or Tokyo or fucking Moscow, if Schaefer got her a big settlement."

"Try her bank," the captain said.

"Everybody's got to have access to his money. Try credit cards."

Williams was raring to go now. "Okay, I'll try all of them."

"Start with the biggest banks and work your way down. Let's assume that she's got some real money, from her settlement from Ramsey. She'd want some help with it, either a stockbroker or a bank. Hang on, I've got it! Try the private banking departments of the big banks-Trust Company, C & S, First Atlanta, Bank South."

Williams was already moving. He started with the Trust Company Bank, and he immediately made a mistake. "Do you have a customer named Elizabeth Barwick?" he asked the director of private banking. "I'm sorry," the man said, "we do not divulge the names of our clients." And he held to that position. He wasn't telling anything, even whether or not she banked there, without a court order.

On his next stop, Williams got foxier. He got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the First National Bank Tower and presented his badge to the receptionist. "I want to inquire about one of your customers," he said.

"Just a moment, please." The woman dialed a number and spoke with someone.

A moment later, a man walked into the reception room. "May I help you?" he asked.

"I want to inquire about one of your customers, Elizabeth Barwick," Williams said, and held his breath.

"Oh, yes," the man said. "She's one of Bill Schwartz's customers. Follow me." Williams exhaled as slowly as he could and followed the man down a hallway to an office where he was introduced to a red-haired man with glasses who appeared to be in his early forties.

"Mr. Schwartz, I'm making inquiries about Elizabeth Barwick in connection with a police investigation." Schwartz looked alarmed.

"Surely Liz Barwick hasn't done anything wrong."

"Certainly not," Williams replied. "I didn't mean to imply that. We think she might have some valuable information for us, and we can't find her. Could you give me her address, please?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Schwartz said.

"Mr. Schwartz, let me be as plain as I can. I have reason to believe that Elizabeth Barwick is in great danger. I must tell you that if you decline to help me, you may be contributing to her violent death."

"I'm extremely upset to hear that," Schwartz said, and he looked upset. "But I'm afraid that I still cannot help you find Ms. Barwick."

Williams was starting to get angry now. "Mr. Schwartz, I'll go to the president of your bank if necessary, and-"

"Detective Williams," Schwartz interrupted, "you misunderstand me; I'm not refusing to tell you where Ms. Barwick is; I don't know where she is."

"Oh, no," Williams said, running a hand across his face. Schwartz got up and went to a filing cabinet. "In the circumstances I don't think I would be violating confidence if I told you that Ms. Barwick opened an account with us in July of this year. Her lawyer arranged it; I never even met her. She deposited… certain funds with us and asked us to manage them. She also asked us to pay certain bills for her." He removed a file from the cabinet and consulted it. "In August she made a lot of purchases, the last among them, a car, on August thirtieth. I had a moderately large sum in cash delivered to her on the following day, at her written request, and that was the last contact I had with her."

"Do you know if she has any credit cards?"

"She does; the usual ones. The bills are sent to me."

"If I could have a look at the receipts, maybe I could track her that way."

"There haven't been any receipts; there haven't been any bills."

"Has she cashed any checks?"

Schwartz consulted the file, then tapped some instructions into the computer terminal on his desk. "No," he said. "Nor has she used her Private Banking Card, which lets her withdraw up to five hundred dollars a day from our teller machines and several thousand others around the country. I suppose the cash I sent her has been meeting her needs."

"What kind of car did she buy?" Schwartz picked up a piece of paper. "Here's the title. It was a Jeep Cherokee, black." He read off the license number. Williams jotted it in his notebook.

"I can at least put out a bulletin on the car. Is there anything else you can tell me that might help find her?"

"I wish there were. I can only tell you that she hasn't touched any of her investments; I handle those." Williams dug out a card. "If you hear from her, I would be very grateful if you would insist that she get in touch with me immediately, at any hour of the day or night. Just say that her life may depend on it."

"I will most certainly do that," Schwartz replied.

Williams sat in his car and telephoned his office. He was connected to Captain Haynes. "Captain, I need an APB on Elizabeth Barwick's Jeep Cherokee, black." He read off the license number.

"Sure thing. I'll do it right away. How far do you want to go on this?"

"I think she's in Georgia. She told me when she called that she read about Schaefer's death. It would only have made the Atlanta and LA papers, I think."

"We'll add the bordering states," the captain said, "just in case."

"Another thing. I think we have to assume that Ramsey knows where she is. I want to put a round-the-clock tail on him." There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

"Captain?"

"Lee," Haynes said finally, "I'm not going to be able to do that."

"But, Captain, it's the only real chance of finding the woman before Ramsey kills her."

"I understand your feelings," Haynes said carefully, "but I can't do it."

The man said "can't," not "won't," Williams thought. "Captain, have you been getting some pressure?"

"Let's just say that one Henry Hoyt, Jr., of a prominent Atlanta law firm, called the chief, and the chief called me."

"I see," Williams said.

"I hope you do, Lee," the captain replied.

"I'll do what I can for you on this one, but I can't go much farther without some really substantial evidence to confirm your theories. Those are my instructions."

"I understand, Captain," Williams said, then he hung up, stunned at this turn of events. He started the car and began driving, with no particular destination in mind. He was numb with depression. Ramsey was going to walk on five murders, and probably commit a sixth, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

There was something, an old police method, one he had never used. He asked himself if he was really that angry, that frustrated. No, he told himself, I'm not. But Ramsey was certain to kill Elizabeth Barwick, unless he was stopped. Soon, he realized that he was driving home. The car seemed to know the way. He parked in the driveway of his West End House and unlocked the door.

It was only two in the afternoon; Martin was at school, and his wife was still at work. He moved slowly through the house, and, almost to his surprise, found himself walking down the stairs to the basement. He had a little workbench there, with a vise and some household tools. He took down a small toolbox from a shelf, found a key hanging on a nail under the workbench, and unlocked the padlock. He took hold of an oily rag and felt the resistance inside it. He peeled back the cloth to reveal a new-looking, Italian, 9-mm automatic pistol. He had taken it from a cache of weapons found in a drug bust two years before, and it had never been fired. He had run the serial number and learned that it had been stolen in a burglary in 1985. It had never been fired, and his fingerprints weren't on it, because he had never touched it with his fingers. Using a corner of the rag, he removed the clip, which held nine cartridges, the heads of which had been carefully ground flat. These bullets had been intended for cops, probably. He shelled out the bullets and wiped each of them carefully with the oily rag, then reinserted them into the clip and wiped the clip clean, too. He shoved the clip back into the pistol, then wiped the whole thing once more; then he wrapped the gun in his handkerchief and put it into his coat pocket. Back in his car, he drove aimlessly. He would have to think very carefully about how he was going to do this. He would have to stop shaking, for a start. He would have to put his oath, his personal guilt out of his mind, and he was not sure he could do that. He wished very badly that he could think of something else to do, but he could not.