The Underground Man

chapter 18

He got into his car and headed back toward the gate. I walked in the opposite direction, to the western side of the college grounds.

From the edge of the mesa a path meandered downhill toward the decimated grove where the fire had started. I could see a panel truck there, and two men moving around it, small in the distance. One of them moved with clumsy speed, like Kelsey.

I went down the path, which passed through burned-out areas in the brush. A firebreak had been bulldozed along a line that ran roughly parallel with the path, and below it. There were places where the fire had jumped the firebreak, but it had been put out on the other side, the side where the city lay. The live body of the fire, when I looked back, seemed to be far up the mountainside and moving away eastward.

The hillside path was littered with black sticks and gray ashes. Stepping carefully among the leavings of the fire, I worked my way down to the broad shelf where the Broadhurst family’s mountain cabin had stood. It had been built of wood, and there was virtually nothing left but several sets of bedsprings, a stove, a blackened tin sink.

I passed the place where the stable had been. The burned-out body of Stanley’s convertible was sitting in the open, its tireless rims sunk in the ashes of the building. It looked like a relic of an ancient civilization, ruined and diminished by the passage of centuries, already half buried among their droppings.

The panel truck had a sheriff-coroner’s decal on the side. It was parked in the lane that led up to the ridge road. There was someone in the cab, but the morning glare on the windshield kept me from seeing who it was.

Beyond the truck, through the denuded trees, I could see a uniformed man digging and Kelsey watching him. There was a pile of dirt between them. A déjà vu feeling gave me a twinge of basic doubt, as if the burial and the digging-up might be repeated daily from now on.

Jean Broadhurst got down out of the truck and lifted her hand to me. She had on the same mod clothes as the day before, and against the surreal background of burned trees she looked more than ever like a lost and widowed Columbine. She was wearing no makeup. Even her mouth was pale.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

“They asked me to come with them and identify Stanley’s body.”

“They’re a little late about getting to it, aren’t they?”

“Mr. Kelsey couldn’t get a deputy coroner here until now. But it doesn’t matter to Stanley. And it doesn’t matter to me.”

She was in a chancy mood, rational and composed and on the edge. I wanted to tell her I had seen her son, but I couldn’t think of a way that wouldn’t scare her. I asked her how her mother-in-law was doing.

“She’s suffering from exhaustion. But Dr. Jerome says she has great recuperative powers.”

“Does she remember about this?” I motioned toward the digging.

“I don’t really know. The doctor told me not to bring up anything painful, which rather tends to limit the conversation.”

Jean was trying hard to sustain a style. But the effort she was making had the effect of silencing me. We stood and looked at each other in embarrassment, as if we shared some guilty knowledge.

“I caught a glimpse of Ronny last night,” I said.

“What are you trying to tell me? That he’s dead?” Her somber eyes were ready for any horror.

“He was very much alive.” I told her where, and when.

“Why didn’t you let me know last night?”

“I was hoping to bring you better news.”

“That means there isn’t any.”

“At least he isn’t dead, and there was no sign that he was being mistreated.”

“But why did they take him? What are they trying to do?”

“That isn’t clear. It’s a complex case involving a number of people, and at least one known criminal. Do you remember the man who came to your house in Northridge yesterday?”

“The one who wanted money? How could I forget him?”

“He came back later and broke into your house. I found him dead in your husband’s study last night.”

“Dead?”

“Somebody knifed him. Does anyone besides your family have access to your house?”

“No, not anyone.” She was trying to comprehend this second death. “Is his body still in the house?”

“No, it was taken out. I called the police. But the study is pretty much of a shambles.”

“It hardly matters,” she said. “I’ve decided not to go back to that house, ever.”

“This is a poor time to make a decision.”

“It’s the only time I have.”

The rhythmic sound of spading had ceased in the grove, and Jean turned toward the sudden emptiness. The digging man was almost out of sight in the hole. Like a man growing laboriously out of the earth, he stood up with Stanley’s body clasped in his arms. He and Kelsey laid the body on a stretcher and brought it toward us through the naked tree trunks.

Jean watched it come as if she dreaded its arrival. But when they laid it on the tail-gate of the truck she walked steadily toward it and looked down without flinching into the dirt-filled eyes. She pushed the dead man’s hair back and bent over to kiss his forehead. The action had a heightened reality, as if she was an actress playing a tragic role.

She stayed beside her husband for some time. Kelsey didn’t question her or disturb her. He introduced me to the deputy coroner, a serious-faced young man named Vaughan Purvis.

“What killed him, Mr. Purvis? The pickax wounds?”

“I’d say the pickax wounds were secondary. He was stabbed in the side with a sharp instrument, probably a knife.”

“Has the knife been found?”

“No, but I plan to make a further search.”

“I don’t think you’ll find it here.”

I told Purvis and Kelsey about the dead man I’d found in Stanley’s house in Northridge. Kelsey said he’d be getting in touch with Arnie Shipstad. Deputy Purvis, who had been listening quietly, broke into unexpectedly emotional speech:

“It looks like a conspiracy, probably the Mafia at work.”

I said that I doubted the Mafia was involved. Kelsey pretended delicately not to have heard him.

“Then what do you make of it all?” Purvis asked me. “Who stabbed him and drove that pickax into the back of his head? Who dug that grave for him?”

“The blond girl is a prime suspect,” I said experimentally.

“I don’t believe it,” Purvis said. “This ground is heavy adobe, and it’s dry – almost like brick. That hole went down at least four feet. I don’t believe any girl could have chopped it out.”

“She may have had an accomplice. Or Stanley Broadhurst may have dug it himself. He was the one who borrowed the tools from the gardener.”

Purvis looked puzzled. “Why would a man dig his own grave?”

“He may not have known it was going to be his,” I said.

“You don’t think he was planning to kill his son,” Purvis said, “like Abraham with Isaac in the Bible?”

Kelsey let out a sardonic laugh, and Purvis went red with embarrassment. He trudged back toward the grave to pick up his spade.

When he was out of hearing, Kelsey said:

“The gardener may be lying about the tools. He may have come up here and used them himself. Don’t forget he lent the girl his car, and lied about it.”

“Fritz is still on your list of suspects, then.”

Kelsey scratched at his short gray hair. “He has to be. I’ve been doing a little digging into his record.”

“He has a record?”

“Not much of a one, but in my book it’s significant. When Fritz was in his late teens he was convicted of a sex crime. It was a first offense – at least that was known of – and the judge allowed him juvenile status and sent him to the county forestry camp.”

“What crime did he commit?”

“Statutory rape. I’m particularly interested, because these sex incidents sometimes crop up in the histories of firebugs. I’m not saying Fritz is a firebug – I have no evidence for that. But in camp he got interested in firefighting, and he even helped put out a couple of fires in the back country.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s indicative,” Kelsey said gravely. “Don’t quote me to any firemen – as a matter of fact, I used to be one myself – but firemen and firebugs are sometimes brothers under the skin. They’re both fascinated by fires. Apparently Fritz Snow was so fascinated that when he got out of camp he went to work for the Forest Service.”

“I’m surprised they took him.”

“He had some pretty good backing. Captain Broadhurst and his wife went to bat for him. The Forest Service didn’t make a fireman out of him, but they gave him some training and a job running a bulldozer. As a matter of fact, he helped to build that trail.” Kelsey pointed toward the trail which went down the side of the bluff into the canyon. “Fritz and his crewmates did a fair job – it’s still in pretty good shape after fifteen years. But he didn’t last long in the Forest Service. Too many personal problems, to put it mildly.”

“Did they fire him on account of his personal problems?”

“I don’t know why they fired him. There’s no notation in the file, and it was before my time.”

“Fritz could tell you.”

“Yeah. But it isn’t going to be easy. Yesterday afternoon, when I tried to talk to him again, his mother wouldn’t let me back into the house. She defends that hopeless son of hers like a wildcat.”

“Maybe she’ll let me in. I want to talk to her anyway. The dead man in Northridge, Al Sweetner, picked up some money from Mrs. Snow last week.”

“How much money?”

“We’ll have to ask her.” I looked at my watch. “It’s ten-fifteen now. Can you meet me out in front of her house at eleven?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Kelsey said. “I want to get in on the preliminary examination of this body. You go and talk to Fritz. There has to be a reason for all the fear he has in him.”

Kelsey’s voice was cool and rather uncomprehending. He talked about fear as if he had never experienced that emotion. Perhaps the reason for his being a fire investigator, I thought, was a puzzled need to understand what made emotional types like Fritz commit their hot foolish crimes.

“Who was the girl he raped?”

“I don’t know who she was. The case was handled in Juvenile Court, and the record of it is sealed. I picked up my information from the old-timers at the courthouse.”