The Blue Hammer

XX

I locked the blue Ford and left it standing in the lane. Fred didn't look fit to drive it, and if he had been I wouldn't have trusted him not to run out on me. He climbed into my car like a poorly working automaton and sat with his head hanging on his blood-spotted chest.

He roused himself from his lethargy when I backed out onto the road: "Where are we going?"

"Down the mountain to talk to the sheriff."

"No."

He turned away from me and fumbled with the door latch on his side. I took hold of his collar and pulled him back into the middle of the seat.

"I don't want to turn you in," I said. "But that's on condition that you answer some questions. I've come a long way to ask them."

He answered after a thinking pause: "I've come a long way, too."

"What for?"

Another pause. "To ask some questions."

"This isn't a word game, Fred. You'll have to do better than that. Doris told me you took her parents' painting and you admitted it to me."

"I didn't say I stole it."

"You took it without their permission. What's the difference?"

"I explained all that to you yesterday. I took the picture to see if I could authenticate it. I took it down to the art museum to compare it with their Chantrys. I left it there overnight and somebody stole it."

"Stole it from the art museum?"

"Yes, sir. I should have locked it up, I admit that. But I left it in one of the open bins. I didn't think anyone would notice it."

"Who did notice it?"

"I have no way of knowing. I didn't tell anyone. You've got to believe me." He turned his dismayed face to me. "I'm not lying."

"Then you were lying yesterday. You said the painting was stolen from your room at home."

"I made a mistake," he said. "I got confused. I was so upset I forgot about taking it down to the museum."

"Is that your final story?"

"It's the truth. I can't change the truth."

I didn't believe him. We drove down the mountain in unfriendly silence. The repeated cry of a screech owl followed us.

"Why did you come to Arizona, Fred?"

He seemed to consider his answer, and finally said, "I wanted to trace the picture."

"The one you took from the Biemeyers' house?"

"Yes." He hung his head.

"What makes you think it's in Arizona?"

"I don't think that. I mean, I don't know whether it is or not. What I'm trying to find out is who painted it."

"Didn't Richard Chantry paint it?"

"I think so, but I don't know when. And I don't know who or where Richard Chantry is. I thought perhaps that Mildred Mead could tell me. Mr. Lashman says she was the model all right. But now she's gone, too."

"To California."

Fred straightened up in his seat. "Where in California?"

"I don't know. Maybe some of the local people can give us the information."

Sheriff Brotherton was waiting in his car, which was parked in the lighted lot outside the substation. I parked beside it, and we all climbed out. Fred was watching me intently, wanting to hear what I would tell the authorities.

"Where's the young lady?" the sheriff said.

"She decided to stay with the society overnight. Maybe longer."

"I hope she knows what she's doing. Are there any sisteren around?"

"I saw a few. This is Fred Johnson, Sheriff."

Brotherton shook the younger man's hand and looked closely into his face. "Did they attack you?"

"I took a swing at one of them. He took a swing at me." Fred seemed proud of the incident. "That was about it."

The sheriff seemed disappointed. "Don't you want to lodge a complaint?"

Fred glanced at me. I gave him no sign, one way or the other.

"No," he said to the sheriff.

"You better think it over. That nose of yours is still bleeding. While you're here, you better go into the station and get Deputy Cameron to give you first aid."

Fred moved toward the substation as if, once inside, he might never get out again.

When he was beyond hearing, I turned to the sheriff: "Did you know Mildred Mead well?"

His face was stony for a moment. His eyes glittered. "Better than you think."

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

He smiled. "She was my first woman. That was around forty years ago, when I was just a kid. It was a great favor she did me. We've been friends ever since."

"But you don't know where she is now?"

"No. I'm kind of worried about Mildred. Her health isn't the best, and she isn't getting any younger. Mildred's had a lot of hard blows in her life, too. I don't like her going off by herself like this." He gave me a long hard contemplative look. "Are you going back to California tomorrow?"

"I plan to."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd look Mildred up, see how she's doing."

"California's a big state, Sheriff."

"I know that. But I can ask around, and see if anyone here has heard from her."

"You said she went to California to stay with relatives."

"That's what she told me before she left. I didn't know she had any relatives, there or anywhere else. Except for her son William." Brotherton's voice had dropped so low that he seemed to be talking to himself.

"And William was murdered in 1943," I said.

The sheriff spat on the ground, and then withdrew into silence. I could hear the murmur of voices from the substation, and the screech owl's cry high on the mountainside. It sounded like an old woman's husky titter.

"You've been doing some research into Mildred's life," he said.

"Not really. She's the subject of a painting that I was hired to recover. But the case keeps sliding off into other cases. Mostly disaster cases."

"Give me a for-instance."

"The disappearance of Richard Chantry. He dropped out of sight in California in 1950, and left behind some paintings which have made him famous."

"I know that," the sheriff said. "I knew him when he was a boy. He was the son of Felix Chantry, who was chief engineer of the mine in Copper City. Richard came back here after he got married. He and his young wife lived in the house up the mountain, and he started painting there. That was back in the early forties."

"Before or after his half brother William was murdered?"

The sheriff walked away from me a few steps, then came back. "How did you know that William Mead was Richard Chantry's half brother?"

"It came up in conversation."

"You must have some pretty wide-ranging conversations." He stood perfectly still for a moment. "You're not suggesting that Richard Chantry murdered his half brother, William?"

"The suggestion is all yours, Sheriff. I didn't even know about William's death until today."

"Then why are you so interested?"

"Murder always interests me. Last night in Santa Teresa there was another murder-also connected with the Chantry family. Did you ever hear of a man named Paul Grimes?"

"I knew him. He was Richard Chantry's teacher. Grimes lived with him and his wife for quite some time. I never thought too much of Grimes. He lost his job at the Copper City high school and married a half-breed." The sheriff averted his head and spat on the ground again.

"Don't you want to know how he was murdered?"

"It doesn't matter to me." He seemed to have a supply of anger in him, which broke out at unexpected points. "Santa Teresa is way outside my territory."

"He was beaten to death," I said. "I understand that William Mead was also beaten to death. Two murders, in two different states, over thirty years apart, but the same _m.o."_

"You're reaching," he said, "with very little to go on."

"Give me more, then. Was Paul Grimes living with the Chantrys when William Mead was killed?"

"He may have been. I think he was. That was back in 1943, during the war."

"Why wasn't Richard Chantry in uniform?"

"He was supposed to be working in the family's copper mine. But I don't think he ever went near it. He stayed at home with his pretty young wife and painted pretty pictures."

"What about William?"

"He was in the army. He came here on leave to visit his brother. William was in uniform when he was killed."

"Was Richard ever questioned about William's death?"

The sheriff answered after some delay, and when he did answer he spoke with difficulty: "Not to my knowledge. I wasn't in charge then, you understand. I was just a junior deputy."

"Who conducted the investigation?"

"I did, for the most part. I was the one that found the body, not too far from here." He pointed east toward the New Mexico desert. "Understand, we didn't find him right away. He'd been dead for several days, and the varmints had been at him. There wasn't much left of his face. We weren't even sure that he'd been killed by human hands until we got the medical examiner out from Tucson. By that time it was too late to do much."

"What would you have done if you'd had the chance?"

The sheriff became quite still again, as if he were listening to voices from the past that I couldn't hear. His eyes were shadowed and remote.

Finally he said, with too much angry certainty, "I wouldn't have done anything different. I don't know what you're trying to prove. I don't know why I'm talking to you at all."

"Because you're an honest man, and you're worried."

"What am I worried about?"

"Mildred Mead, for one thing. You're afraid that something has happened to her."

He took a deep breath. "I don't deny that."

"And I think you're still worried about that body you found in the desert."

He looked at me sharply but made no other response. I said, "Are you certain that it was her son William's body?"

"Absolutely certain."

"Did you know him?"

"Not that well. But he was carrying his official papers. In addition to which, we brought Mildred out from Tucson. I was there when she made the identification." He went into another of his silences.

"Did Mildred take the body back to Tucson with her?"

"She wanted to. But the army decided that after we got finished with it the body should go to Mead's wife. We packed the poor remains into a sealed coffin and shipped them back to the wife in California. At first none of us knew he had a wife. He hadn't been married very long. He married her after he entered the service, a friend of his told me."

"Was this a local friend?"

"No. He was an army buddy. I disremember his name-something like Wilson or Jackson. Anyway, he was very fond of Mead and he wangled a leave to come out here and talk to me about him. But he couldn't tell me much, except that Mead had a wife and a baby boy in California. I wanted to go and see them, but the county wouldn't put up the expense money for me. Mead's army buddy got shipped out in a hurry, and I never saw him again, though later, after the war, he sent me a postcard from a vets' hospital in California. One way and another, I never did make a case." The sheriff sounded faintly apologetic.

"I don't understand why Richard Chantry wasn't questioned."

"It's simple enough. Richard was out of the state before the body was found. I made a real effort to have him brought back-you understand, I'm not saying he was guilty, in any way-but I couldn't get any support from higher authorities. The Chantrys still had a lot of political power, and the Chantry name was kept out of the William Mead case. It wasn't even publicized that Mildred Mead was his mother."

"Was old Felix Chantry still alive in 1943?"

"No. He died the year before."

"Who was running the copper mine?"

"A fellow named Biemeyer. He wasn't the official head at the time, but he was making the decisions."

"Including the one not to question Richard Chantry?"

"I wouldn't know about that."

His voice had changed. He had started to lie, or to withhold the truth. Like every sheriff in every county, he would have his political debts and his unspeakable secrets.

I wanted to ask him whom he was trying to protect, but decided not to. I was far out of my own territory, among people I didn't know or entirely understand, and there was a sense of unexpended trouble in the air.