Graveyard Plots

Sanctuary A “Nameless Detective” Story

We were still twenty miles from Paradise when the skies opened up on us.

It was 7:30 on a Sunday evening in late October and Kerry and I had spent the afternoon driving around in the Sierra Nevada up near Lake Almanor. The sun had been shining when we’d started out from Paradise just before noon, but the sky had begun to cloud up in mid-afternoon and the first rain had begun falling at half-past four. We’d have started back before that, and been in Paradise long since — literally and maybe figuratively, too — except for the tire that had got punctured by some litterbug’s broken beer bottle and the damned spare that had turned up just as flat. We’d had to wait for a good Samaritan to come along and take us into Almanor, and then to ride back out with a Triple-A truck and a new tire. The whole episode had cost us well over two hours and neither of us was in a very good mood. So then the rain had to change from a drizzle to a deluge so heavy the windshield wipers couldn’t get rid of the water fast enough. Straining to see, I had to slow to less than twenty-five or run the risk of losing the car on one of the sharp turns in the two-lane mountain road.

Kerry said, “Oh God, just what we need. Can you see? It’s just a blur out there to me.”

“Ditto.”

“Maybe we’d better pull over until it lets up.”

“No place to go.”

“The first place we come to, then.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “we’ll be all right.”

“Some Sunday,” she said irritably. “Some terrific weekend.”

I didn’t say anything. My temper was as short as hers and I did not want us to start bickering; the road and that silver curtain of rain took all my attention. But the truth was, it hadn’t been such a bad weekend until this afternoon. I’d had half a day’s worth of wrap-up business in Chico on Friday, on a civil case I was working for a San Francisco attorney, and I had taken Kerry along because my job fascinated her — she fancied herself as having latent detective abilities — and because the timing was right for a three-day mini-vacation after my business was finished. That night we’d driven up to Paradise, a resort and retirement community in the Sierra foothills a dozen miles northeast of Chico, and taken a room in a first-class motel. The weather was good, with no early snow on the ground; it was the off-season so there weren’t many other tourists in the area; and we’d been having a pretty nice time eating out, exploring, and making love.

Now we were paying for it.

The rain seemed to be coming down harder, if that were possible. It was like trying to drive under and through a seemingly endless waterfall. Close on both sides of the road, pine forest loomed black and indistinct; there wasn’t even a turnout where I could pull off. I let our speed slacken to under twenty, little more than a crawl. At least there wasn’t any other traffic: we hadn’t seen another car traveling in either direction in the past five minutes.

The night was pitch black except for the shimmer of our headlights against the rain. Or it was until we came around another curve. Kerry said, “Up ahead, look! It’s some kind of roadside business place.”

Through the downpour I could make out the reds and blues of a neon sign, the squat shape of a single log-and-shake-roofed building set back at the edge of a narrow clearing. There were lights in one of the front windows, and more neon that materialized as beer advertisements. The big sign on the roof said liquidly: Kern’s Woodland Tavern and Cafe.

I eased the car off the highway, onto a deserted gravel parking area that fronted the building. There was nothing behind the place except more trees and an empty access road that vanished in among them. Directly in front were a pair of gas pumps: I stopped the car between them and the entrance to the tavern half, the part that was lighted. The other half, the cafe, had a Closed sign in its darkened window.

“The bar’s open, at least,” Kerry said. “Why don’t we go in? I can use something hot to drink.”

“Might as well. It’s better than sitting here.”

We ran to the tavern entrance, a distance of maybe ten feet; but we were both half-drenched by the time we pushed inside. Some hard rain, the kind you only get in the mountains and that might last anywhere from three minutes to thirty.

The tavern was one of those rustic country types, full of rough-hewn furniture and deer heads; this one also had a big American flag stretched out across the wall that bisected the building, one made before Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union because it only had forty-eight stars. A three-log, fire blazed hotly in a native-stone fireplace. Near the window was a musicians’ dais, empty now, and a scattering of maybe a dozen tables. Opposite was the bar, rough-hewn like the furnishings; on the wall behind it were a lot of little burnt-wood plaques that had dumb sayings on them like If You Don’t Ask Us for Credit, We Won’t Double the Price of Your Drinks.

There were only two people in the place, both of them men. One, a middle-aged guy wearing a plaid shirt and a tight-fitting woolen hunter’s hat, was passed out at one of the tables, his head cradled in both arms. The other man was upright and conscious, standing at the near end of the bar, on the customer side of it. He was a few years older than the drunk, short and wiry and pasty-faced; dressed in shirt and chinos and a loose-fitting barman’s apron. He came forward a few paces, hands on his hips, as Kerry and I entered and I shut the door against the force of the storm.

“Something I can do for you folks?”

“Lord, yes,” Kerry said. “We need a drink. Another few minutes and we’d have drowned out there.”

“You visitors in these parts?”

“Yes. We’re staying in Paradise.”

“Bad night to be out driving,” the barman said. “Fact is, I was just about to close up and head home. Not many customers on a night like this.”

“Close up? You’re not going to send us back out in that?”

“Well...”

“We won’t stay long,” I said. “Just until the rain lets up enough so I can see where I’m driving.”

“We could wait in the car,” Kerry said, “but the heater’s not working.” Which was the kind of sneaky lie they teach you in the advertising business; the heater was working fine. “It’s nice and warm in here.”

The barman shrugged and said without much enthusiasm, “Guess it’ll be all right. Supper’ll wait a few more minutes.”

Kerry smiled at him and went over to the fire. He moved to the door and locked it, just in case some other damn fools showed up out of the storm. And I unbuttoned my coat, opened it up like a flasher to the room’s warmth.

At the fire Kerry took off the wet paisley scarf she was wearing and fluffed out her thick auburn hair. The firelight made it shine like burnished copper. “I’ll have a toddy,” she said to the barman.

“Lady?”

“A hot toddy. A strong one.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I said, “Just a beer for me. Miller Lite.”

The wiry guy moved around behind the plank. Outside, the rain was still hammering down with a vengeance; it sounded like a load of pebbles being dumped relentlessly on the tavern’s roof. You could hear the wind skirling around in the eaves and rattling the windows, as if it, too, were seeking sanctuary from the storm.

“What was he celebrating?” Kerry asked the barman.

“What’s that, lady?”

“Your other customer.” She nodded at the drunk sprawled over the table.

“Oh, that’s Clint Jackson. Good customer. He... well, he takes a little too much now and then. Got a drinking problem.”

“I’ll say he does. What are you going to do with him?”

“Do with him?”

“You’re not going to let him sleep there all night, are you?”

“No, no. I’ll get him sobered up. Wouldn’t let him drive home in the shape he’s in now.”

“I should hope not.”

“He can be a little mean when he’s been drinking heavy,” the barman said. That was directed at me because I had wandered over toward the drunk’s table. The rasp of the man’s breathing was audible from nearby, even with the pound of the rain. “Better just let him be.”

“I won’t disturb him, don’t worry.”

I turned over to the bar and sat on one of the green-leatherette stools and watched the barman set up Kerry’s hot toddy and my beer. He asked me as he worked, “Where you folks from?”

“San Francisco.”

“Long time since I been there. Fifteen years.”

“It’s changed. You wouldn’t recognize parts of it.”

“I guess not.”

“You own this tavern, Mr.—?”

“Kern’s my name, Sam Kern. Sure, I own it.”

“Nice place. Had it long?”

“Twenty years.”

“You live nearby, do you?”

“Not far. House back in the woods a ways.”

“Must be peaceful, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Sure,” he said. “The wife and I like it fine. Plenty of business in the summer, plenty of time to loaf in the winter.”

“You don’t stay open during the winter?”

“Nope. Close down the end of this month.”

Kerry came over from the fireplace, sat down next to me, and took a sip of her hot toddy. And made a face and said, “Ugh. Rum.”

“Something wrong, lady?”

“You made it with rum instead of bourbon. I hate rum.”

“I did? Must’ve picked up the wrong bottle. Sorry, I’ll mix you up another one.”

He did that. When he brought the drink I laid a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. He looked at it and shook his head. “Afraid I can’t change that, mister,” he said. “Already closed up my register and put every dime in the safe. You wouldn’t have anything smaller, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I’ve got some singles,” Kerry said. “How much is it?”

“Three dollars.”

She paid him out of her purse. He rang up the sale and put the singles in the empty cash drawer and shut it again. Pretty soon he moved down to the other end of the bar and began using a bar towel on some glasses.

A couple of minutes passed in silence, except for the noise of the rain on the roof. I glanced over at the drunk. He still had his head buried in his arms; he hadn’t moved since we’d come in.

The steady drum of the rain began to diminish finally, and the wind quit howling and rattling the window panes. The wiry guy looked over at the front window, at the wet night beyond. “Letting up,” he said. “You folks should be all right on the road now.”

I finished the beer in my glass. “Drink up,” I said to Kerry. “We’d better get moving.”

“What if it’s just a momentary lull?”

“I don’t think it is. Come on, Mr. Kern wants to close up and go have his supper.”

“All right.”

She drank the last of her toddy, and when she was on her feet I took her arm and steered her to the door. The wiry guy came out from behind the plank and followed us, so he could lock the door again after we were gone. I let Kerry flip the lock over; as she did I half-turned back toward him.

He said, “Good night, folks, stop in again—” and that was when I hit him.

It was a sucker punch and he was wide open to it; the blow caught him just under the left eye, spun him and knocked him off his feet, and sent him skidding on his backside toward the bar. Kerry let out a startled yell that got lost in the clatter of the guy hitting the bar stools; one of them fell over on top of him. He lay crumpled and unmoving against the brass rail, with the stool’s cushion hiding part of his face.

Kerry said, “For God’s sake, what did you do that for?” in horrified tones. “Have you lost your mind?”

I didn’t answer her. Instead I went to where the guy lay and knelt down and got the gun out from where it was tucked inside his pants, under the apron. It was a .357 Magnum — a hell of a piece of artillery. Behind me, Kerry gasped when she saw it. I put it into the pocket of my coat without looking at her and felt the artery in the guy’s neck to make sure he was still alive: I’d hit him pretty hard, hard enough to numb the first three fingers on my right hand. But he was all right, if you didn’t count the blood leaking out of his nose, the bruise that was already forming on his cheek, and the fact that he was out cold.

Straightening again, flexing my sore hand, I crossed to where the drunk was draped over the table. Only he wasn’t a drunk; when I took the hunter’s hat off I could see the lump on the back of his head, the coagulating blood that matted his hair. I felt his neck the way I had the other guy’s: his pulse was shallow but regular. But he was in worse shape than the wiry guy — the way that head wound looked, he had at least a concussion. He needed a doctor’s attention, and soon.

Kerry was standing a few feet away gawping at me. I said to her, “Get on the phone, call the Highway Patrol. Tell them we need an ambulance. Tell them to hurry.”

“I don’t understand, what’s going on—?”

“This man is the real Sam Kern, or at least somebody who works here,” I said. “The one I hit is an impostor — probably either an escaped convict or a recent parolee. Tell the Highway Patrol that, too.”

“God,” she said, but she didn’t argue; she went straight to the phone behind the bar.

I took another look at the wiry guy. He hadn’t moved an inch, and the way he was breathing satisfied me he was going to be out for some time. In the pocket of his chinos I found a wallet full of ID that identified it as Sam Kern’s; but the photograph on the driver’s license was that of the wounded man at the table.

I went out into the rain, got the set of emergency handcuffs I keep in the trunk of the car, took them back inside, and snapped one cuff around the wiry guy’s wrist and the other around the brass rail. I was over looking at Sam Kern again when Kerry finished with her telephone call.

“They’re sending people out right away,” she said.

“Good. This is Kern, all right, and I think he’ll be okay; but you can’t tell with head injuries. We’d better just leave him where he is.”

She wet a cloth and brought it over and laid it across Kern’s neck without touching his wound. Her eyes were big and her cheeks had a milky cast; she still looked confused.

“How did you know?” she said.

“That the other guy was an impostor? Half a dozen reasons. You’re always trying to play detective; how come you didn’t spot them?”

“Don’t kid around, you. What reasons?”

“All right. One, he told us he was just getting ready to close up and go home, yet there’s a big log fire blazing away in the fireplace. No tavern owner would stoke up a fire like that just before closing for the night.

“Two, he told us this man here was a regular customer and that he wouldn’t let him drive home until he sobered up. But where’s his car? It’s not out front; the parking area was deserted when we drove in. There’s no room for a car around back and there wasn’t one on that access road either.

“Three, the hat the real Kern was wearing. How many men sit in a bar and get drunk with their coat off but their hat still on? And not only on, but jammed down tight on his head. Had to be some reason for the hat — to hide something like that head wound.

“Four, you asked the other one for a toddy; he didn’t know what you meant at first. Then he made it with rum instead of bourbon. Could have been a mistake, but that’s not likely for a man who has been serving drinks at the same bar for twenty years; that man knows which bottle is which. No, it’s the kind of mistake somebody makes if he not only doesn’t know how well the bottles are arranged but isn’t enough of a bartender in the first place to know how to make a hot toddy.

“Five, he said he couldn’t change my twenty because he’d taken every dime out of the cash register and put it in the safe. And the drawer is empty; I saw it when you paid him. But what kind of businessman empties his cash drawer before he locks up for the night, when customers like us might still show up? And how many businessmen clean out their cash drawers completely? All the ones I know leave at least the change in there and most also leave a few singles, so they won’t have to bother putting it all back the next day.”

Kerry no longer looked confused; now she looked a little cowed. She said, “You said he’s probably an escaped convict or a recent parolee. How could you possibly know that?”

“That’s number six,” I said. “The color of his skin, babe — it’s white, pasty. No man who has lived in these mountains for twenty years, as hot as it gets up here in the summer, could have a complexion like that; the only people who do are shut-ins, hospital patients, and convicts.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“I figure it happened something like this: He arrived here earlier tonight — hitchhiking, probably; which would make him a parolee, or else he’d have picked up his own set of wheels. He found himself alone with Kern and it was a set-up he couldn’t resist. Maybe he had that .357 Magnum with him; more likely it belongs to Kern. In any case he used something hard to knock Kern over the head — out on this side of the bar, maybe while Kern was stoking the fire. Then he rifled the till. But he’s not too smart; he forgot to lock the front door first.

“Then we showed up. When he saw our headlights through the window he didn’t know who we might be. He could have done any of three things. Run and lock the door and pretend the place was closed — but what if we were friends of Kern’s? What if we looked through the window in any event and saw Kern lying on the floor? His second alternative was to let us come in and throw down on us, rob us too and steal our car; and that’s probably what he would have done if we’d been locals who knew Kern. But he didn’t want to do it that way; it would only buy him more trouble, leave one or more people who could identify him as an armed thief a lot more easily than a man with a busted head. And he’s not a killer, thank Christ, so that alternative was out. His only other choice was to find out if we were strangers — he asked about that right away, remember — and if we were, to run a bluff and get rid of us quick.

“He picked Kern up off the floor, draped him over the table, and shoved that hat down over his head to hide the wound. His own hat, maybe; it had to have been handy. Kern was probably wearing the apron, so all he had to do was yank it off and tie it around himself to cover the gun inside his belt. All of that wouldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds — less time than it took us to stop the car, get out, and come inside.”

Kerry was silent for a space of time. Then she asked, “You didn’t know he had that gun, did you? Before you hit him?”

“Sure I did. It made a bulge under his apron when he moved around. Didn’t you notice it?”

“Well,” she said, “I... um, I guess I did, when we first came in. But I thought... I mean, I didn’t look again because...”

“Because why?”

“I thought... oh hell, I thought something had aroused him.”

“Aroused him?”

“I thought he had a damn erection, all right?”

I looked at her. And then I burst out laughing. “Kerry Wade, star detective,” I said between cackles, “the female Sherlock Holmes. She can’t even tell the difference between a gun barrel and an erection!”

“Oh shut up,” she said.

I was still chuckling when the Highway Patrol and a county ambulance got there a few minutes later.