The Blue Hammer

XXX

I switched off the kitchen lights and took another look at the Chantry place. There were definitely movements in the greenhouse. But I couldn't make out their significance.

I went out to the car for my binoculars, and ran into Ruth Biemeyer for the second time.

"Have you seen Doris?" she said. "I'm getting a little concerned about her."

She was more than a little concerned. Her voice was thin. Her eyes were dark and craterous in the brilliant outside lights. I said, "Has Doris left the house?"

"I'm afraid she has, unless she's hiding somewhere. She may have run away with Fred Johnson."

"How could she? Fred's in jail."

"He was," she said. "But my lawyer got him out today. I'm afraid I made a mistake. Please don't tell Jack about it, will you? He'd never let me forget it."

She was a woman in trouble, sinking still deeper into trouble. She had lost her poise and started to lose her hope.

"I'll tell your husband what I have to-no more. Where is Fred? I want to talk to him."

"We dropped him off at his parents' home. I'm afraid it wasn't a good idea, was it?"

"It isn't a good idea," I said, "for you and me to be standing here with all the outside lights on. There's something funny going on at the Chantry place."

"I know there is. It's been going on a good part of the day. Today they were cutting down weeds in there. Tonight they've been digging a hole."

"What kind of a hole?"

"Go and look for yourself. They're still at it."

I went down the driveway to the edge of the slope, where the wire fence stopped me. The lights went out behind me. I leaned on the fence and focused my binoculars on the greenhouse. A dark man and a woman with shining gray hair-Rico and Mrs. Chantry-were working inside the building. They seemed to be filling in a hole with shovels, using a pile of dirt that stood between them.

Rico slid down into the half-filled hole and jumped up and down, packing the loose dirt. He appeared to be sinking upright into the earth, like a damned soul sinking into hell by his own volition. Mrs. Chantry stood and watched him.

I caught her face in my binoculars. She looked rosy and rough and dangerous. There was dirt on her face, and her hair curved like glistening gray hawk wings over her temples.

She reached a hand down to Rico and helped him out of the hole. They teetered together on its edge and then returned to their task of filling it in. The earth fell soundlessly from their spades.

A black thought bit at the edge of my mind and gradually eclipsed it. The people in the greenhouse had dug a grave and now they were filling it in. It didn't seem quite possible. But if it was, then it was possible that Betty Siddon's body was under the dirt.

I went back to the car for my gun and had it in my hand when Ruth Biemeyer said behind me, "What are you planning to do with that?"

"I want to know what's happening down there."

"For God's sake, don't take a gun with you. So many innocent people get shot. And I still haven't found my daughter."

I didn't argue. But I slipped the gun, a medium-caliber automatic, into my jacket pocket. I went back to the fence and climbed over it and started down the slope to the barranca. It had been planted and overgrown with succulent plants that felt rubbery under my feet.

Farther down, the succulents gave way to sage and other native bushes. Nestled among the bushes, like a giant golden egg, was a girl's blond head. Doris was crouched there, watching what was going on in the greenhouse.

"Doris?" I said. "Don't be scared."

But she jumped like a fawn and went crashing down the slope. I caught her and told her to be quiet. She was trembling and breathing hard. Her body kept making unwilled or half-willed movements, trying to jerk away from me. I held her with both arms around her shoulders.

"Don't be afraid, Doris. I won't hurt you."

"You're hurting me now. Let me go."

"I will if you promise to stay where you are and keep quiet."

The girl quieted down a bit, but I could still hear her breathing.

The couple in the greenhouse had stopped filling in the hole and were standing together in listening attitudes. Their eyes ranged up the dark hillside. I got down among the sagebrush and pulled Doris down with me. After a long tense minute, the people in the greenhouse resumed their work. It looked like gravediggers' work.

"Did you see what they were burying, Doris?"

"No, I didn't. It was already covered when I got here."

"What brought you here?"

"I saw the light in the greenhouse; then I came down the hill and saw the big pile of dirt. Do you think they're burying a body?"

There was awe in her voice. There was also familiarity, as if her nightmares were coming true at last. "I don't know," I said.

We moved across the slope to the corner of the wire fence and along it to her parents' driveway. Ruth Biemeyer was waiting at the top.

"What do you think we ought to do?" she said.

"I'll phone Captain Mackendrick."

She left me in the kitchen. I kept my eye on the greenhouse through the window. All I could see was barred light crossed by occasional shadows.

Mackendrick wasn't in his office, and the police operator couldn't locate him right away. I had time to remember that he had known Chantry when he was a young cop, and to wonder if he was going to see him again shortly.

I got Mackendrick at home. His phone-was answered by a woman with a semi-official voice who sounded both impatient and resigned. After a certain amount of explanation, I persuaded her to let me talk to her husband. I told him what was happening in the greenhouse.

"Digging in your own greenhouse isn't a crime," he said. "I can't do anything about it officially. Hell, they could sue the city."

"Not if they buried a body."

"Did you see them bury a body?"

"No."

"Then what do you expect me to do?"

"Think about it," I said. "People don't dig grave-sized holes and fill them up just for the fun of it."

"You'd be surprised at what they do. Maybe they're looking for something."

"Such as?"

"A leaky water main. I've seen people dig up a whole yard looking for a water pipe with a hole in it."

"People like Mrs. Chantry?"

He was slow in answering. "I don't think we better continue this conversation. If you decide to take any action, I don't want to know about it."

"There's something else you don't want to know about," I said. "But I want to tell you."

Mackendrick sighed, or grunted. "Make it fast, eh? I've got a lot on my agenda, and it's late."

"You know a young woman named Betty Siddon."

"That I do. She's been in my hair."

"You haven't seen her tonight, have you?"

"No."

"She seems to be missing."

"What does that mean?"

"She's dropped out of sight. I haven't been able to contact her."

"For how long?"

"Several hours."

Mackendrick shouted at me, in a voice that was half angry and half jocose, "For God's sake, that doesn't mean anything. If she'd been gone for a week or two, you might say she was missing."

"Let's wait twenty years," I said. "Then we'll all be dead."

My voice sounded strange in my own ears, high and angry.

Mackendrick lowered his voice, as if to set me an example. "What's the trouble, Archer, are you stuck on the girl or something?"

"I'm worried about her."

"Okay, I'll tell my people to be on the lookout for her. Good night."

I sat with the dead receiver in my hand, feeling an angry pain that I had felt before. I lived at the intersection of two worlds. One was the actual world where danger was seldom far from people's lives, where reality threatened them with its cutting edge. The other was the world where Mackendrick had to operate in a maze of tradition and a grid of rules-a world where nothing officially happened until it was reported through channels.

From where I sat in the dark kitchen, I could see the grave-diggers putting the final touches to the hole they had filled in. They seemed to be gathering up armfuls of cuttings and scattering them over the raw dirt. Finally Rico picked up a brown sack, swung it over his shoulder, and carried it out to a car standing in the courtyard. He opened the trunk of the car and slung the brown sack in.

Mrs. Chantry turned out the lights in the greenhouse and followed Rico into the main house.

I went out to my car and drove it down the hill, parking just around the corner from Mrs. Chantry's street. Though the movements of the night and its people were far beyond the range of my understanding, I was beginning to pick up some of the smaller rhythms. In less than fifteen minutes, there was a glow of headlights from the direction of the Chantry house.

The Chantry car, with Rico driving alone in the front seat, passed me and turned toward the freeway.

I followed at a distance, but close enough to see him enter the northbound lane. There was fairly heavy traffic at this mid-evening hour, crawling like an endless luminescent worm into the tunneled darkness. We passed the university's lighted towers, the crowded buildings of the student annex where I had first met Doris, the narrow entrance to the dark beach where Jake Whitmore's body had been found.

Rico stayed on the freeway, and so did I. The traffic was dwindling down to its intercity components, trucks and night-driving tourists and the like. I let the distance between us lengthen out, and almost lost him. He made an unexpected right turn off the freeway, then a quick left through an underpass. I left the highway and waited out of sight for a minute, then followed him down to the sea with my car lights out.

The object of his journey was a wooden pier that extended out over the water for a couple of hundred yards. Three or four miles beyond the end of the pier, a half-dozen oil platforms blazed with lights like leafless Christmas trees. And off to the north, like a menacing West Coast Statue of Liberty, a giant gas flame flared.

Against the several lights I could see Rico approaching the foot of the pier, hunchbacked by the sack he had slung across his shoulder. I left my car and followed him on foot, walking softly and narrowing my distance. By the time Rico had reached the seaward end, I was close behind him.

"Drop it, Rico," I said. "Get your hands up." He made a move to heave the sack overside. It struck the top rail and fell clanking on the deck of the pier. Rico turned on me swinging. I moved inside his flailing arms and hit him several times in the belly, then once on the jaw. He went down and stayed for a while. I searched his clothes. No gun.

I untied the twine that closed the mouth of his sack, and spilled some of its contents on the planking. There were human bones caked with dirt, a damaged human skull, rusted engine parts from an old car. Rico sighed and rolled over. Then he was on me, heavy and strong but dull in his reactions. His head swung loose and undefended. I didn't hit him again. I backed away and got out my gun and told him to calm down.

Instead he turned and ran staggering to the outer end of the pier. He started to climb over the railing, or try to. His feet kept slipping. The tide was low and the water was a long way down.

For some reason, it became important to me that Rico shouldn't make it into the black water. I pocketed my gun and got my arms around his waist. Dragged him back onto the deck and held him down.

As I marched Rico back to my car and got him safely inside of it, I understood one source of my satisfaction. Twenty-odd years ago, near an oil-stained pier like this, I had fought in the water with a man named Puddler and drowned him.

Rico, whatever his sins, had served as an equalizer for one of mine.