The Underground Man

chapter 6

At the base of a sandstone bluff where the road petered out entirely, she stopped the pickup and we got out.

“This is where we shift to shanks’ mare,” she said. “Ordinarily we could have driven around by way of Rattlesnake Road, but that’s where they’re fighting the fire.”

In the lee of the bluff was a brown wooden sign, “Falconer Trail.” The trail was a dusty track bulldozed out of the steep side of the canyon. As Mrs. Broadhurst went up ahead of me, she explained that her father had given the land for the trail to the Forest Service. She sounded as if she was trying to cheer herself in any way she could.

I ate her dust until I was looking down into the tops of the tallest sycamores in the canyon below. A daytime moon hung over the bluff, and we went on climbing toward it. When we reached the top I was wet under my clothes.

About a hundred yards back from the edge, a large weathered redwood cabin stood against a grove of trees. Some of the trees had been blackened and maimed where the fire had burned an erratic swath through the grove. The cabin itself was partly red and looked as if it had been splashed with blood.

Beyond the trees was a black hillside where the fire had browsed. The hillside slanted up to a ridge road and continued rising beyond the ridge to where the fire was now. It seemed to be moving laterally across the face of the mountain. The flames that from a distance had looked like artillery flashes were crashing through the thick chaparral like cavalry.

The ridge road was about midway between us and the main body of the fire. Toward the east, where the foothills flattened out into a mesa, the road curved down toward a collection of buildings which looked like a small college. Between them and the fire, bulldozers were crawling back and forth on the face of the mountain, cutting a firebreak in the deep brush.

The road was clogged with tanker trucks and other heavy equipment. Men stood around them in waiting attitudes, as if by behaving modestly and discreetly they could make the fire stay up on the mountain and die there, like an unwanted god.

As Mrs. Broadhurst and I approached the cabin I could see that part of its walls and roof had been splashed from the air with red fire retardant. The rest of the walls and the shutters over the windows were weathered gray.

The door was hanging open, with the key in the Yale lock. Mrs. Broadhurst walked up to it slowly, as if she dreaded what she might find inside. But there was nothing unusual to be seen in the big rustic front room. The ashes in the stone fireplace were cold, and might have been cold for years. Pieces of old-fashioned furniture draped with canvas stood around like formless images of the past.

Mrs. Broadhurst sat down heavily on a canvas-covered armchair. Dust rose around her. She coughed and spoke in a different voice, low and ashamed:

“I came up the trail a little too fast, I’m afraid.”

I went out to the kitchen to get her some water. There were cups in the cupboard, but when I turned on the tap in the tin sink no water came. The butane stove was disconnected, too.

I walked through the other rooms while I was at it: two downstairs bedrooms and a sleeping loft which was reached by steep wooden stairs. The loft was lit by a dormer window, and there were three beds in it, covered with canvas. One of them looked rumpled. I stripped the canvas off it. On the heavy gray blanket underneath there was a Rorschach blot of blood which looked recent but not fresh.

I went down to the big front room. Mrs. Broadhurst had rested her head against the back of the chair. Her closed face was smooth and peaceful, and she was snoring gently.

I heard the rising roar of a plane coming in low over the mountain. I went out the back door in time to see its red spoor falling on the fire. The plane grew smaller, its roar diminuendoed.

Two deer – a doe and a fawn – came down the slope in a dry creek channel, heading for the grove. They saw me and rockinghorsed over a fallen log into the trees.

From the rear of the cabin a washed-out gravel lane overgrown with weeds meandered toward the ridge road. Starting along the lane toward the trees, I noticed wheel tracks in the weeds leading off toward a small stable. The wheel tracks looked new, and I could see only one set of them.

I followed them to the stable and peered in. A black convertible that looked like Stanley’s stood there with the top down. I found the registration in the dash compartment. It was Stanley’s all right.

I slammed the door of the convertible. A noise that sounded like an echo or a response came from the direction of the trees. Perhaps it was the crack of a stick breaking. I went out and headed for the partly burned grove. All I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps and a faint sighing which came from the wind in the trees.

Then I made out a more distant noise which I didn’t recognize. It sounded like the whirring of wings. I felt hot wind on my face, and glanced up the slope.

The wall of smoke that hung above the fire was leaning out from the mountain. At its base the fire was burning more brightly and had changed direction. Outriders of flame were leaping down the slope to the left, and firemen were moving along the ridge road to meet them.

The wind was changing. I could hear it rattling now among the leaves – the same sound that had wakened me in West Los Angeles early that morning. There were human noises, too – sounds of movement among the trees.

“Stanley?” I said.

A man in a blue suit and a red hard hat stepped out from behind the blotched trunk of a sycamore. He was a big man, and he moved with a kind of clumsy lightness.

“Looking for somebody?” He had a quiet cool voice, which gave the effect of holding itself in reserve.

“Several people.”

“I’m the only one around,” he said pleasantly.

His heavy arms and thighs bulged through his business clothes. His face was wet, and there was dirt on his shoes. He took off his hard hat, wiping his face and forehead with a bandana handkerchief. His hair was gray and clipped short, like fur on a cannonball.

I walked toward him, into the skeletal shadow of the sycamore. The smoky moon was lodged in its top, segmented by small black branches. With a quick conjurer’s motion, the big man produced a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and thrust it toward me.

“Smoke?”

“No thanks. I don’t smoke.”

“Don’t smoke cigarettes, you mean?”

“I gave them up.”

“What about cigars?”

“I never liked them,” I said. “Are you taking a poll?”

“You might call it that.” He smiled broadly, revealing several gold teeth. “How about cigarillos? Some people smoke them instead of cigarettes.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“These people you say you’re looking for, do any of them smoke cigarillos?”

“I don’t think so.” Then I remembered that Stanley Broadhurst did. “Why?”

“No reason, I’m just curious.” He glanced up the mountainside. “That fire is starting to move. I don’t like the feel of the wind. It has the feel of a Santa Ana.”

“It was blowing down south early this morning.”

“So I’ve heard. Are you from Los Angeles?”

“That’s right.” He seemed to have all the time he needed, but I was tired of fooling around with him. “My name is Archer. I’m a licensed private detective, employed by the Broadhurst family.”

“I was wondering. I saw you come out of the stable.”

“Stanley Broadhurst’s car is in there.”

“I know,” he said. “Is Stanley Broadhurst one of the people you’re looking for?”

“Yes, he is.”

“License?”

I showed him my photostat.

“Well, I may be able to help you.”

He turned abruptly and moved in among the trees along a rutted trail. I followed him. The leaves were so dry under my feet that it was like walking on cornflakes.

We came to an opening in the trees. The big sycamore which partly overarched it had been burned. Smoke was still rising from its charred branches and from the undergrowth behind it.

Near the middle of the open space there was a hole in the ground between three and four feet in diameter. A spade stood upright beside it in a pile of dirt and stones. Off to one side of the pile, a pickax lay on the ground. Its sharp tip seemed to have been dipped in dark red paint. Reluctantly I looked down into the hole.

In its shallow depth a man’s body lay curled like a foetus, face upturned. I recognized his peppermint-striped shirt, glad rags to be buried in. And in spite of the dirt that stuffed his open mouth and clung to his eyes, I recognized Stanley Broadhurst, and I said so.

The big man absorbed the information quietly. “What was he doing here, do you know?”

“No. I don’t. But I believe this is part of his family’s ranch. You haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”

“I’m with the Forest Service. My name’s Joe Kelsey, I’m trying to find out what started this fire. And,” he added deliberately, “I think I have found out. It seems to have flared up in this immediate area. I came across this, right there.” He indicated a yellow plastic marker stuck in the burned-over ground a few feet from where we were standing. Then he produced a small aluminum evidence case and snapped it open. It contained a single half-burned cigarillo.

“Did Broadhurst smoke these?”

“I saw him smoke one this morning. You’ll probably find the package in his clothes.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to move him until the coroner sees him. It looks as if I may have to, though.”

He squinted uphill toward the fire. It blazed like a displaced sunset through the trees. The black silhouettes of men fighting it looked small and futile in spite of their tanker trucks and bulldozers. Off to the left the fire had spilled over the ridge and was pouring downhill like fuming acid eating the dry brush. Its smoke blew ahead of it and spread across the city toward the sea.

Kelsey took the spade and started to throw dirt into the hole, talking as he worked.

“I hate to bury a man twice, but it’s better than letting him get roasted. The fire’s coming back this way.”

“Was he buried when you found him?”

“That’s correct. But whoever buried him didn’t do much of a job of covering up. I found the spade and the pick with the blood on it – and then the filled hole with loose dirt around. So I started digging. I didn’t know what I was going to find. But I sort of had a feeling that it would be a dead man with a hole in his head.”

Kelsey worked rapidly. The dirt covered Stanley’s striped shirt and his upturned insulted face. Kelsey spoke to me over his shoulder:

“You mentioned that you were looking for several people. Who are the others?”

“The dead man’s little boy is one. And there was a blond girl with him.”

“So I’ve heard. Can you describe her?”

“Blue eyes, five foot six, 115 pounds, age about eighteen. Broadhurst’s widow can tell you more about her. She’s at the ranchhouse.”

“Where’s your car? I came out on a fire truck.”

I told him that Stanley’s mother had brought me in her pickup, and that she was in the cabin. Kelsey stopped spading dirt. His face was running with sweat, and mildly puzzled.

“What’s she doing in there?”

“Resting.”

“We’re going to have to interrupt her rest.”

Beyond the grove, in the unburned brush, the fire had grown almost as tall as the trees. The air moved in spurts and felt like hot animal breath.

We ran away from it, with Kelsey carrying the spade and me carrying the bloody pick. The pick felt heavy by the time we reached the door of the cabin. I set it down and knocked on the door before I went in.

Mrs. Broadhurst sat up with a start. Her face was rosy. Sleep clung to her eyes and furred her voice:

“I must have dozed off, forgive me, but I had the sweetest dream. I spent – we spent our honeymoon here, you know, right in this cabin. It was during the war, quite early in the war, and traveling wasn’t possible. I dreamed that I was on my honeymoon, and none of the bad things had happened.”

Her half-dreaming eyes focused on my face and recognized the signs, which I couldn’t conceal, of another bad thing that had happened. Then she saw Kelsey with the spade in his hands. He looked like a giant gravedigger blocking the light in the doorway.

Mrs. Broadhurst’s normal expression, competent and cool and rather strained, forced itself down over her open face. She got up very quickly, and almost lost her balance.

“Mr. Kelsey? It’s Mr. Kelsey, isn’t it? What’s happened?”

“We found your son, ma’am.”

“Where is he? I want to talk to him.”

Kelsey said in deep embarrassment: “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, ma’am.”

“Why? Has he gone somewhere?”

Kelsey gave me an appealing look. Mrs. Broadhurst walked toward him.

“What are you doing with that spade? That’s my spade, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

She took it out of his hands. “It most certainly is. I bought it for my own use last spring. Where did you get hold of it, from my gardener?”

“I found it in the clump of trees yonder.” Kelsey gestured in that direction.

“What on earth was it doing there?”

Kelsey’s mouth opened and shut. He was unwilling or afraid to tell her that Stanley was dead. I moved toward her and told her that her son had been killed, probably with a pickax.

I stepped outside and showed her the pickax. “Is this yours, too?”

She looked at it dully. “Yes, I believe it is.”

Her voice was a low monotone, hardly more than a whisper. She turned and began to run toward the burning trees, stumbling in her high-heeled riding boots. Kelsey ran after her, heavily and rapidly like a bear. He took her around the waist and lifted her off her feet and turned her around away from the fire.

She kicked and shouted: “Let me go. I want my son.”

“He’s in a hole in the ground, ma’am. You can’t go in there now, nobody can. But his body won’t burn, it’s safe underground.”

She twisted in his arms and struck at his face. He dropped her. She fell in the brown weeds, beating at the ground and crying that she wanted her son.

I got down on my knees beside her and talked her into getting up and coming with us. We went down the trail in single file, with Kelsey leading the way and Mrs. Broadhurst between us. I stayed close behind her, in case she tried to do something wild like throwing herself down the side of the bluff. She moved passively with her head down, like a prisoner between guards.