The Fourth Durango

Chapter 35

At 2:04 A.M. on that last Sunday in June, Kelly Vines and Chief Sid Fork once again sat side by side on the couch with the woven-cane back in Virginia Trice’s Victorian parlor.

Mayor B. D. Huckins sat opposite them, her legs tucked beneath a straight-back chair and crossed at the ankles. Jack Adair sat on the low chair with the worn plush seat-hair mussed, shirttails half-out and bare feet in the cordovan oxfords he still hadn’t bothered to tie because it was Adair who had raced down the stairs at 1:52 A.M. to answer the insistent doorbell. Vines, then only half-awake, had dressed while Adair was in the kitchen, making coffee.

Huckins put her cup and saucer down and said, “Virginia not home from work yet?”

“Not yet,” Adair said.

“We need to talk about something.”

“Something that can’t wait, I take it,” Adair said.

She nodded. “But first I want answers to some questions.”

“First thing I wish you’d do, B. D.,” Sid Fork said, “is quit acting so goddamn mysterious.”

The mayor’s gray eyes were still on Adair when she said, “Shut up, Sid.”

The chief of police opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, slumped back on the couch, stuck his feet out and jammed his hands down into his pants pockets, looking, Kelly Vines thought, extremely pissed off.

Still gazing at Adair and obviously indifferent to how Fork felt, Huckins cleared her throat and said, “You never told us what happened to the boy and girl-Jack and Jill Jimson-after your supreme court overturned their guilty verdicts and ordered a new trial.”

“They were retried in another county.”

“A change of venue then?”

“Combine Wilson argued for it and got it. The Jimson kids were tried a second time a hundred and thirteen miles from home and acquitted.”

“But didn’t that bribe the old justice took, what’s his name, Fuller-”

“Mark Tyson Fuller.”

“Didn’t that taint the supreme court’s decision?”

“The state decided there was no bribe.”

“What did it call that five hundred thousand dollars in shoeboxes on the dining room table?”

“Four hundred and ninety-seven thousand,” Adair corrected her, “not to mention the five hundred thousand in my closet that they didn’t find.”

“Let’s stick to the Fuller case,” she said. “If it wasn’t a bribe, what did they call it?”

“A double murder,” Adair said. “And also a very expensive and elaborate scheme to make it look like a bribe.”

“This is official-and not just your theory?” Huckins said.

“It’s what was decided after an extensive investigation by city and state police. Actually the state police were the attorney general’s investigators who were brought in because, after all, old Mark was a state supreme court justice.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Huckins said.

Adair’s blue eyes were kitten-innocent as he looked at Kelly Vines and asked, “Didn’t we go over all this during lunch at the roadhouse?”

“No,” Vines said.

“Why not, Mr. Vines?” she said.

Vines shrugged. “It’s a matter of public record.”

“The public record in a distant state.”

“Maybe I should’ve said common knowledge.”

“Sounds to me like some folks for some reason don’t trust other folks,” Fork said.

The silence that followed was growing uncomfortable when Jack Adair, using what he regarded as his voice of sweet reason, broke it with: “We’re about to reach an impasse that maybe I can prevent, Mayor, if you’ll indulge me for a minute or so.”

After considering the request, she nodded.

“According to both state and city police,” Adair said, “the killer who rigged the deaths of old Justice Fuller and his wife to look like suicide and murder, respectively, was either careless, stupid or hadn’t watched enough TV. As every nine-year-old now knows, thanks to television, when you fire a semiautomatic pistol it leaves a residue on your hand. There wasn’t any on Justice Fuller’s hand. Therefore, he couldn’t have shot either his wife or himself.” Adair looked at Vines. “The murder weapon, as I recall, was a thirty-two-caliber Llama, right?”

“The XA model,” Vines said.

“The police traced it to a Tampa gun shop,” Adair continued, “where it’d been bought by a Mr. T. S. Jones, whose name, address and driver’s license proved false.”

“What about that letter Fuller wrote-his confession?” Huckins asked.

“The police decided it was dictated to him. They’re convinced the shooter threatened to kill old Mrs. Fuller unless her husband wrote exactly what he was told. After he wrote the dictated confession and signed it, the cops think he was forced to remove his lower plate and use it as a paperweight-a bizarre touch-and shove his chair back from the table. The killer then shot Fuller, went into the living room and shot Mrs. Fuller, who was so far gone she probably didn’t even realize what was happening. The killer then returned to the dining room, wrapped Fuller’s hand around the pistol to leave some prints and let the gun fall to the floor. It was, the cops said, a very amateurish piece of work-except for the false teeth on the suicide note, which they thought was kind of cute, and the three thousand dollars missing from the five hundred thousand that made it look as if Fuller had already spent it. The cops also liked that a lot.”

“What if the cops had found that half million in your closet?” Huckins said.

“If that’d happened, I suspect they wouldn’t have been nearly so diligent in their investigation of the Fullers’ deaths and might well have accepted the written confession at face value. And as for me, well, I’d’ve still been doing time.”

“So you’re saying that no one was bribed,” Huckins said.

“I’m still living off that half million Kelly found in my closet and shipped down to the Bahamas.”

“But that wasn’t a bribe in the legal sense, was it?”

“What would you call it-a gift?”

“I’d call it found money,” Sid Fork said. “But I’m kind of flexible.”

There was another silence, briefer this time, that Huckins ended when she asked Adair, “Where are they now?”

“Jack and Jill?” He looked at Vines. “I’m not sure. New York?”

“London,” Vines said.

“When we were out at Cousin Mary’s today-yesterday now-except for Sid, of course, and you avoided telling me-”

“Neglected, not avoided,” Adair said.

“When you didn’t tell me what you’ve just now told us, I remember your saying that if the two Jimson kids died, their share of the gas revenues or royalties would go to their stepmother. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Adair said. “And if the stepmother died, her share would go to Jack and Jill.”

“Once I’d found out that bribe was a fake,” Sid Fork said, “you could bet the rent I’d’ve had me a talk with that stepmother.”

“Kelly’s the authority on her,” Adair said.

All three looked at Vines, but it was the mayor who said, “This time, Mr. Vines, please don’t leave anything out.”

Vines ignored her and looked to his right at the chief of police. “How hard is it to fake a suicide when a gun’s the death weapon?”

“Damned near impossible what with all the forensic expertise there is nowadays,” Fork said. “Best way to fake a suicide is shove the victim out of a high window around three in the morning and don’t leave a note or anything else behind.”

Vines turned to the mayor. “After the cops told our somewhat dim attorney general that the Fullers’ deaths were probably a double murder, he did nothing until he figured out what would give him the most political mileage. Finally, he decided that having a bribe-proof supreme court was the way to go-even though its chief justice by then was having a little trouble with the IRS.”

“Not so little,” Adair said.

“So the A.G. ordered a full-scale investigation that would, in his words, leave no stone unturned. One of the stones most in need of turning was, of course, the stepmother. So a two-man team of experienced investigators was sent down to question her. Soon after the team came back and made its report, the attorney general called a press conference to announce that the deaths of Justice and Mrs. Mark Fuller weren’t suicide-murder after all, but rather what he called ‘a diabolical double murder’ and that neither Justice Fuller nor Chief Justice Adair had ever been bribed. Two days later, just before the two investigators were to question the stepmother again, her Cadillac ran off the road at an estimated seventy-eight miles per hour and into a cottonwood tree.”

“Killed her, too, I bet,” Fork said.

“Broke her neck. An autopsy showed a point-one-six-percent alcohol in her blood, which made her more than legally drunk. An autopsy of the Cadillac by a team of mechanics hired by the attorney general revealed what he described-at still another press conference-as ‘an inexplicable failure of the car’s steering mechanism.’ When a reporter asked if that meant somebody had messed with the tie rods, he said he couldn’t comment until further tests were made, and went on to announce that the stepmother, over the past five months, had withdrawn almost two million dollars in cash from her several bank accounts. After that, everybody thought they knew where the money in the shoeboxes came from and the tie rods were almost forgotten.”

“Pretty good motive,” Sid Fork said. “She puts up two million to win how much-fifteen million, twenty?”

“If both the Jimson kids died, she’d get all the gas royalties,” Vines said. “The last I heard they were valued at anywhere between fifty and a hundred million dollars.”

“If she could’ve made it look like those two kids had successfully bribed the supreme court to keep them out of the gas chamber-”

“It’s lethal injection in my state,” Adair said.

“Okay,” Fork said. “Out of the needle room. But if that’d happened, I don’t think there’s a court in the land that’d lift a finger to keep the kids from being executed.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Adair said.

“And if Mr. Vines hadn’t found that half a million in your closet,” said B. D. Huckins, “I think it still could’ve worked.”

“I’m afraid that’s right, too,” Adair said.

“Anyway, it sure has a happy ending, doesn’t it?” Sid Fork said. “The two kids are acquitted. The state supreme court turns out to be honest after all, except for that little problem its chief justice had with the IRS. And when they finally got around to figuring out the ‘who profits?’ angle if the kids’d been executed, it turns out to be the wicked stepmother. That about it, Mr. Vines?”

“Just about.”

“Then tell me this,” Fork said. “Did they ever try and come up with the sucker who did the scut work? The one who zapped the old judge and his wife, then dressed up like a priest to stick that half a million bucks in the judge’s closet and maybe even messed with the tie rods on the stepmother’s Caddie?”

Before Vines could answer, B. D. Huckins looked at Adair and said, “What was the stepmother’s name?”

“Marie. Marie Jimson.”

“Before she was married-her maiden name?”

“Marie Contraire.”

Sid Fork’s face went almost white just before the blood raced up his neck and turned his ears a cardinal red. He jumped to his feet, pointed an accusatory finger at Huckins and roared, “Goddamnit, B. D.!”

The mayor gave him her sweetest smile. “I just wanted you to hear it in context from them and not from me.”

The red was fading to pink as Fork, still glowering, sat back down and said, “That was one shitty thing to pull.”

“Shut up and listen some more,” she said and turned to Adair again. “Because Sid wasn’t with us when we met with Parvis at Cousin Mary’s, I gave him a condensed version of what we talked about. Obviously, I left out a few details.”

“Like the stepmother’s maiden name,” Fork said.

She ignored him and shifted her gaze to Vines. “When you called earlier tonight, I was in some delicate political negotiations with the sheriff and that’s why I hung up on you. I apologize.”

“No need.”

“Later, Sid came up with some very important information, which is the real reason we’re here.”

She’s giving him all the credit for something, Vines thought as he looked at Fork. “What’d you turn up, Chief?”

It was not a modest smile that spread across Fork’s face. “This guy that B. D. and I knew a long time ago-the one who dresses up like a priest and a plumber and all-and who we knew as Teddy Smith or Jones?”

“The killer,” Vines said.

“Yeah. Him. Well, I found out his real name.”

“How?”

“From fingerprints he left on that pink van.”

“Stop milking it, Sid,” Huckins said.

His proud and happy smile still in place, Fork looked from Vines to Adair. “Well, the guy’s real name isn’t Smith or Jones-although that’s no big news. His real name’s Theodore Contraire.”

Fork watched with evident enjoyment as surprise rearranged the faces of Adair and Vines. It was Vines who recovered first and asked, “Her brother?”

Fork nodded. “Who else could she trust with something like that? According to his sheet, he has-or had, I guess-a sister three years older than him whose name was Marie Elena-like the old song-Contraire.”

“How long’s his sheet?” Vines said.

“Nine arrests and two convictions. He spent two years in Angola down in Louisiana and nine months in the L.A. county jail for aggravated assault.”

“What’d he give as his occupation-just out of curiosity?”

Fork grinned happily. “Actor.”

“Congratulations, Chief,” Adair said.

“Well, it took more charm than brains,” said Fork, trying to sound modest but not succeeding. “All I had to do was convince some guy to do something he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to do.”

Vines rose, went to the window, looked out, noticed the unmarked four-door sedan that was parked down the street and wondered whether it was the black detective or the too-tall one who was keeping the night watch. He turned from the window to B. D. Huckins.

“When you hung up on me,” he said, “I was calling to tell you your brother-in-law had phoned to say that the date and place of the switch are set. July fourth at Cousin Mary’s.”

Huckins nodded her approval. “Good. Merriman always closes on the fourth. What time?”

“Mansur didn’t say.”

“It’ll have to be in the afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Because Sid and I have to be in the parade in the morning.”