The Fourth Durango

Chapter 31

The chief of police-and his two detectives who had once worked homicide in Detroit and Chicago-kept their eyes on Kelly Vines as he stared down at the dead woman who wore the dark red T-shirt with the white letters that read, “I Shoot Anything.”

“Know her?” Sid Fork asked.

“Not exactly,” Vines said, still staring at the woman.

“What’s ‘not exactly’ mean?”

Vines looked at Fork. “It means I saw her once. In Lompoc. She was the one who opened the rear door of the pink Floradora Flowers van and took the pictures of me and Adair.”

Fork nodded contentedly, as if confirming his own private theory, turned to Bryant, the too-tall elf, and said, “How d’you read it, Wade?”

Bryant tugged thoughtfully at his large right ear, which Fork had long thought resembled Mr. Spock’s, shook his head in a small gesture of regret and said, “I think we rode Ivy a little too hard over there at the hotel this afternoon. I think we pissed him off royal. I think he went broody over it, got in his car, bought himself a six-pack, went looking for the pink van and just happened to find it. I think he used the flasher that’s still plugged into his cigarette lighter to pull the van over. I think she was driving it, the girl. I think Ivy made the girl open the rear door so he could see what was inside. I think the plumber and his shotgun were inside. I know a shotgun killed Ivy and I know he got one shot off himself, but I don’t know if he hit anything. I think the plumber was done with the girl and used the shotgun on her, maybe just to shut her up.” Bryant paused, frowned, erased the frown and said, “That’s what I think.”

Fork turned to the black bald detective. “Joe?”

“The same-except I threw up.”

Fork’s sympathetic nod encouraged him to continue.

Indicating the two dead bodies with a nod, Joe Huff said, “They’re nothing compared to what you’d see any Tuesday in Chicago. I got sick because I realized if I ever find that motherfucker, I won’t even try and collar him.”

“Just blow him away, huh?” Fork said.

“You know it. Thing is, I never got that mad before and I guess that’s what made me sick. But when I got through throwing up over there behind Ivy’s Honda, I still felt just as mad and I still feel that way right this minute.”

“Who doesn’t?” Fork said, again looked at the dead woman, then back at Huff. “See if you can find out who she is.”

As Huff squatted beside the woman, his expression now detached, almost clinical, Fork recognized the throaty burble of an Aston Martin being driven in second gear. He turned and saw one of the uniforms bending down to look inside the British car. The uniform straightened up with a jack-in-the-box snap and waved it on.

The Aston Martin stopped just behind Ivy Settles’s Honda, whose headlights no one had yet turned off. Dixie Mansur emerged from the driver’s side, Mayor B. D. Huckins from the passenger side. Dixie still wore her blue cotton sweater and white pants. The mayor wore a navy-blue suit that wouldn’t have been out of place at either a wake or a funeral.

Fork noticed that Huckins’s full lips-devoid of all lipstick-were clamped into a thin stern line. But it wasn’t her mildly aggrieved pothole complaint look. Instead, it was what he recognized as her total disaster look that she used to confront mudslides, raging brushfires, ruptured sewer mains and political treachery.

Both Wade Bryant and Joe Huff also recognized the look; murmured to Fork that they might as well go see if the uniforms had turned up anything useful, and slipped away into the night. Sid Fork decided he might as well try to preempt the mayor’s attack.

“I forgot to call you again, B. D., and I’m awful sorry.”

Stopping a yard away from Fork, the mayor first examined him carefully, then used a cold and formal tone to say, “That’s perfectly all right, Chief Fork. Others called. UPI, AP and Reuters among them. They seem anxious to know all about our four murders in two days. Mrs. Ivy Settles also called after she heard about her husband’s death on an L.A. radio station. She was extremely-what’s the word?-distraught. But by then I could at least answer some of her questions because I’d been filled in and brought more or less up to date by Sheriff Coates. You know how diligent Charlie Coates is.”

The chief of police decided a nod would be his wisest answer.

“Sheriff Coates is wondering if he should send in what he calls a task force to help us out,” Huckins continued. “He seems to think our police department may be inadequate or, as he said, ‘spread too thin’ to deal with four homicides in two days. Sheriff Coates thinks that if Durango keeps this up, it’ll soon be on the five o’clock CNN news, sandwiched in between east L.A. gangs and the Israelis and Palestinians. Sheriff Coates is not at all sure Durango deserves that kind of notoriety. What d’you think, Chief Fork? Should the task force be invited in?”

Obviously confident of Fork’s answer, B. D. Huckins strode past him to the body of Ivy Settles. She stared down at it for several seconds, biting her lower lip, then walked another five or six feet and stared down at the dead woman. “Who is she, Sid?”

Fork looked at Kelly Vines. “Tell her,” he said and walked back to the Honda Prelude, reached through its open window and turned off its headlights.

“You knew her?” the mayor asked Vines.

Vines shook his head. “She was the one who took the pictures of Adair and me in Lompoc-and probably of you and Fork.”

“The mysterious photographer.” She looked down at the dead woman again. “Do they know who killed her?”

“They think it’s the same short fat guy who was a priest when he killed Norm Trice, a plumber when he killed Soldier Sloan and God knows what when he killed these two.”

“Teddy,” she said.

“Teddy Smith or Jones. Whatever he’s calling himself.”

The mayor looked out across the failed industrial park, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, moved her lips slightly, let the breath out and said, “I was just counting the funerals I have to go to next week-thanks to Teddy.”

“Three,” Vines said, gave the dead woman a brief look and added, “Maybe even four.”

“I wonder how many reporters there’ll be?”

“As always, too many.”

“We don’t need that-their prying.”

Vines studied the mayor, reached a conclusion and said, “Dixie didn’t tell you, did she? If she had, you and I wouldn’t be talking about public relations.”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“That Parvis Mansur’s made contact.”

The mayor turned quickly and almost yelled at her sister, who was standing near the Prelude, talking cheerfully to a glum Sid Fork. Dixie Mansur turned slowly and, accompanied by Fork, strolled over to Huckins and Vines, giving the dead Ivy Settles an incurious glance and altogether ignoring the dead woman photographer.

“Mr. Vines tells me Parvis made contact,” the mayor said.

Her sister nodded.

“You forgot to tell me. Or Sid.”

“I didn’t forget,” Dixie said. “Parvis told me to tell Vines and Adair. Adair was out of town, so I told Vines. I like to do exactly what Parvis says. It makes life simpler.”

“He didn’t tell you not to tell Sid and me?”

“No. Why?”

Instead of replying, the mayor turned to the chief of police. “You and I have to decide right now if we’re going to invite Charlie Coates and his task force in.” Sid Fork turned away to look across Noble’s Trace at the same young uniformed policeman who had waved on the Aston Martin. The policeman was now bending over to lecture a dedicated gawker in a Thunderbird.

“Well?” the mayor said.

“If you invite Charlie Coates and his task force in, B. D.,” Fork said, still watching the young policeman, “I quit.”

“Don’t threaten me, Sid.”

“That’s a guarantee, not a threat.”

Before the mayor could make some possibly irrevocable decision, Kelly Vines interceded. “Like some professional advice?”

“From you?” she said.

Vines gave her his crooked, boyish grin, full of charm, the one Jack Adair knew to be a disguise. “My body’s disbarred, not my brain.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and looked around. “Where?”

“My car,” Sid Fork suggested.

“You want me along?” Dixie Mansur said.

“No,” the mayor replied. “We don’t.”

“Good,” Dixie said and started across Noble’s Trace toward the young uniformed policeman who was again directing traffic.

The mayor and the chief of police sat in the rear of the four-door sedan. The disbarred lawyer sat in front, half-turned behind the steering wheel, his right arm resting along the top of the front seat’s back.

“Don’t turn the sheriff down cold,” Vines said without preamble. “Stall him. When the media show up, give them your ten-minute scenic tour and make it last half an hour. Express grief, shock, horror and outrage about the murders. When they ask about motive, express bewilderment, but hint that arrests are imminent. Invite them to the funerals. Mention Durango’s growth and investment potential until they’re sick of it. Finally, call a press conference for the two of you and tell them again what you’ve already told them.”

“Bore ’em to death, huh?” Fork said.

Vines nodded.

Huckins, after nodding her unenthusiastic agreement, said, “We can’t stall Coates forever because he’ll insist on a deadline. And unless we come up with the killer before it expires, we’ll have to let him and his task force in.”

“What about jurisdiction?” Vines asked.

“We’re two blocks past the city limits,” Fork said. “So it’s my dead detective but his jurisdiction.”

“Tell the sheriff he can send in his task force on the fourth of July,” Vines said. “A week from Monday.”

“Why the fourth?” Huckins asked.

“Because if Mansur hasn’t closed the deal by then, it’s not going to be closed. After that, even if he swears it’s still on, neither Adair nor I will touch it.”

It was obvious Sid Fork didn’t like the date of the deadline. He glared at Vines, then at the mayor, gave his gray mustache a hard brush with his thumb and said, “You let a sheriff’s task force in here on the fourth of July, B. D., and you can forget about being reelected on the eighth of November.”

“Christ,” Vines said. “Make it the fifth then.”

Fork nodded, satisfied. “The fifth’d be a whole lot better.”

B. D. Huckins turned to gaze out the car window at her sister, who was talking to the young uniformed policeman. “It doesn’t really matter if it’s the fourth or the fifth, Sid.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

The mayor turned to him and spoke in a voice that was slightly weary and extremely patient. A teacher’s voice, Vines thought. “Charlie Coates doesn’t want to send in a task force to help us find a killer. He wants to send in a task force to lift up the rocks and peek into our dark corners.”

“Let ’em,” Fork said. “You and me, B. D., we never took a dime from those hideout deals. The city got every last cent.”

She smiled at him sadly. “Is that what you plan to tell Charlie Coates and his task force, Sid?”