Dead Skip

Twenty-one

How could they have missed so badly? As he began the fifty-mile drive to San Francisco, Ballard mentally reworked the other five cases he had closed in his search for Bart’s attacker. Had he screwed up on one of those? Or had the attacker actually come from some other case entirely? Or from some incident in Bart’s life that nobody — maybe not even Bart — would know about?

Or were the police right after all? Had Bart taken out the Jag for some unknown personal reason and gone off Twin Peaks by accident?

No, dammit, he couldn’t accept that. There had to be something he had missed or misinterpreted in the Griffin file, something even Kearny had missed or misinterpreted, something that would lead them to...

He realized that he had listened twice to his own name being called on the radio by an unfamiliar voice.

“Uh, yeah, this is SF-6. Over.” Panic nibbled at him. Bart...

“Are you Larry Ballard?”

“10-4. Larry Ballard. Go ahead, please.”

“This is Dunlop Jensen, NFS. Giselle Marc of KDM 366 asked me to relay a message to you from San Francisco, over.”

NFS. News Forwarding Service. Ballard remembered Giselle talking about this guy. A house-bound cripple who lived up in the hills behind Oakland and made a living monitoring scores of local radio bands, picking up reports of fire, robberies, emergencies, relaying them to Bay Area TV stations for a per-item fee and to emergency services gratis.

“Did you read my last transmission, SF-6? Over.”

“Loud and clear, NFS. Go ahead with the message from KDM 366.”

Ballard was amazed his voice was so even. Dread was clutching at him. Giselle wouldn’t be on the DKA radio at midnight unless something had happened. Bart... dead? Or maybe worse, Bart waking up with mashed potatoes where his brains had been? Since Oakland Control would be shut down and SF Control hadn’t been able to reach them here, far beyond the East Bay hills, Giselle had used Dunlop Jensen as a relay.

“Here is the message,” came Jensen’s voice. “ ‘Bart is sitting in with a full deck.’ KDM 366 said you would know what this meant.”

What it meant? Jesus, Jesus, it meant Bart was awake and all right! It meant...

“10-4! Message received and understood. Do you drink bourbon, over?”

“Anything I can get, SF-6.” There was immediate warmth in the voice at Ballard’s personal question. “I’ve got the original hollow leg. Two of ’em, in fact. Literally.”

“Giselle and a bottle and I will be up on Sunday.”

“I’ll be here,” said Jensen happily, and signed off.

Ballard’s foot went down, sending the Ford toward the Bay Bridge at a speed that would have gotten him a ticket if the CHP unit patrolling that stretch of freeway hadn’t been stopped for coffee in the all-night café at Orinda Village.

The T-Bird had no citizens’ band, so Kearny did not hear the exchanges between Ballard and Dunlop Jensen. He was loafing along at a sedentary sixty, listening to KEEN Radio’s country and western out of San Jose, tapping time against the steering wheel with his fingers. If some of Ballard’s frustration at the dead end in the Charles M. Griffin investigation also burned in his gut, he gave no outward sign of it. He had been around a long time, knew himself well enough to control impatience.

Not that knowing yourself helped a hell of a lot in the detective business. Knowing other people was the secret, knowing enough to ease off on Parker, to ease off on Hawkley, to keep pushing on Griffin. He’d never ease off on that son of a bitch because, unlike Ballard, he had no momentary fears that they might have gotten the wrong case.

They had the right case. They just hadn’t gotten it turned right side up yet. Heslip had been attacked: the attack had been perpetrated, as the police would say, either by Griffin or because of Griffin.

So go back to Griffin, then. Start with the given information.

A big, usually easygoing guy with a mother fixation, early forties, balding, mutton-chop sideburns, drinking too much, six feet tall and 210 pounds, physically well able to clout Heslip over the head, carry him to the Jaguar, run him off Twin Peaks.

Physically able. But was he the head-roller type? A man like Parker, okay. But Griffin? Hard to accept. Could a guy called sweet by a big lusty broad he had walked out on, a guy hung up on Mom and apple pie and the missionary position, become so devious, so larcenous, so money-hungry as to embezzle, over a period of years, thirty thousand bucks?

Something flickered through a corner of his mind, too fast to catch, even though his foot came off the accelerator momentarily and he eased into the right lane. He shook his head and picked up speed again. Missed it.

Back to the contradictory Griffin. And his mother. She died, freeing him at last for the swinging bachelor life. Booze, the big lush topless dancer, a big sedately sporty car. Joy at being free? Or desperation at being alone? Clinging to Cheri as a cockeyed mother substitute? Something there? What about him telling Cheri he was going to “do something” about the kink with the flashlight?

Kearny shook his head again. Chivalry didn’t fit with Griffin’s animal cunning in confusing his back trail. It didn’t fit with his murderous ability to make murderous decisions and carry them out under the goad of panic.

It was as if he were two different guys. As if...

Kearny swerved the T-Bird abruptly into the right lane, slowing as he checked the rear-view mirror, letting it roll dead on the shoulder. Griffin, acting like a split personality — what did the head-shrinkers call it, a schizoid personality? One shocked by his kinky friend’s attempted assault on Cheri, the other turning around and selling the furniture she was using. There was the answer, of course. And there was an easy way to find out if he was right or not. Ask Odum the questions he should have asked the first time, as soon as he had realized that Odum was guilty of nothing more than his own native stupidity.

Kearny pulled back into the deserted freeway, went on swiftly to the first overpass which would let him wishbone back toward Antioch. Toward Howard Odum and his ugly girl friend. Toward the answers to two questions.

Not that they would clear up all the problems. But they would confirm who — if he was right; and if he was, they would confirm why Bart had gotten it. Because Bart had been close, very close, without even realizing there was anything to be close to. Had stopped, of course, just to be a nice guy. I got something funny on one of the files, probably just a coincidence...

Which it hadn’t been. It had been deadly.

Yes, Kearny was getting old, soft between the ears. To miss such obvious answers concerning that whole San Jose episode. Misdirection. Making the dead appear alive days, even weeks, after the actual death. Which had been, Kearny figured, on February 9.

It was after midnight when he went up the walk to 1902 Gavallo Road in Antioch. He was turning over in his mind the four possible methods for getting through the locked front door of the building in a hurry, but none of them was necessary. Just as he got there a grumpy-faced man in a bathrobe and slippers was dragged out by a long-haired Chihuahua the size and general configuration of a squirrel.

The dog yapped in ferocious challenge as Kearny caught the door before its pneumatic closer did. The detective beamed and said “Good evening” at the same time the sour-faced man said, “Every goddamn night at midnight. Every goddamn night.”

Kearny nodded and kept smiling and kept going, up the inner stairs to the top floor, turning left to number seven. He took a wrench out of his pocket — brought along for method three of getting into the building, breaking out a pane of glass — and began tapping with it on the hollow-core birch door. He kept on tapping, neither louder nor softer, faster nor slower, until a strangled angry voice called from within.

A few moments later the door was wrenched open and Odum, minus his glasses and unexpectedly hairy in hastily donned shorts, peered out. “I oughta bust in your nose, buddy, this time of night! I—”

“Two questions I should have asked before.” Kearny’s heavy uncompromising voice was full of an inevitability few could withstand. Odum, he knew, could not. Odum was a born loser; he’d be back inside before the year was out. He would always go for the wrong decision as a moth would always go for the candle.

The myopic eyes had finally recognized Kearny. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I didn’t... I thought... Ah... what are the questions?”

“One. What did Griffin look like? Two. Did you give his description to a black investigator named Heslip on Tuesday afternoon?”

And Odum answered them.

Ten minutes later Kearny was in the Thunderbird and picking up an on-ramp for California 4 west. No time now to bury Griffin’s car in Concord while he picked up his station wagon. If someone tried to get him on the radio they couldn’t, of course — but who would be on the air this time of night anyway?

No, he’d just drive the T-Bird into the city, stop somewhere to check a phone book, get the address. If it was an unlisted number, stop at the DKA office to check the city directory. Because Odum’s answers had confirmed it.

The killer hadn’t just been stupid; he just hadn’t realized how complex people’s lives were. Hadn’t known that being docketed for a court appearance, and being out on $600 bail, coupled with the disappearance, would send a lawyer and an insurance agent and finally a firm of private detectives snooping into Griffin’s life. And talk about stupid: why hadn’t Kearny realized long before that Griffin had used the Castro Valley address in good faith on his credit application for the T-Bird, even though he had moved out the month before? It probably still was his legal residence, because he would have owned it once the will cleared probate. He probably still had been registered to vote out of that address. A shame. A damned shame.

At least Bart hadn’t died. Yet. Kearny would call the hospital later, maybe even drop in there after he had wrapped up the case. No need to ask Bart what he had done after leaving Odum on Tuesday afternoon. Kearny already knew. He hoped the body wouldn’t be too hard to find. He had a pretty good idea of where it would be. The simplistic reason for selling the furniture told him that. And, of course, the fact that the killer seemed always to act under the grip of emotion. Strike first, consider the consequences later, as he had done with Bart.