Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (18 page)

“I showed him how to use the computer when he first got it.” Her voice took on a ragged edge. “After that, I didn’t enter the room. He told me if I did, he’d kill Tommy. He would have, too.” Her hands twisted.

Linda drew a breath.

Rob turned the revelation over in his mind. It was sickening but plausible. It also gave Tammy a strong maternal motive for murder, stronger than self-defense.

Linda shifted again on her chair, jotted another note. In the hall, two people held a brief conversation and the P.A. system crackled with code.

“I use a laptop for business,” Tammy was saying in dull, mechanical tones. “I sit at the kitchen table when I have to bring my work home.”

Rob nodded and stopped the recorder. He flipped the cassette over, reinserted it, and pressed Record. “Did Hal have other sources of income?”

“Sometimes he was flush. I never figured that out. He gambled, mostly poker, and he used to cackle about ways to cheat the 1RS. He hated income tax. That’s why we live here.” Washington has no state income tax. Oregon does.

“Any other sources of money?”

Tammy’s forehead creased with concentration. “There were the swap meets. He liked swap meets. He bought and sold guns for cash. And vintage cars, through the station.”

Bingo. “Did he do any pothunting?”

“Like digging up Indian burial grounds? No. He had friends who did when he was a kid, and his father collected arrowheads. Hal got those when the old man died.”

“You’re sure he didn’t go out prospecting for pots?”

“Can you imagine Hal hiking?”

“With difficulty.”

She gave a small snort of laughter, genuine this time. “Hal could talk sports like nobody’s business, but he never did anything to keep in shape after he left school.”

He’d been the star center of the Klalo High School football team, if Rob remembered correctly.

Tammy said, “I was hoping he’d have a heart attack.” The P.A. system paged Dr. Rowland.

Rob rubbed the spot between his eyebrows where a headache threatened. “Did Hal know any pothunters?”

“One of his cronies made money selling arrowheads and thunder eggs, but I haven’t seen him around lately.”

Rob held his breath.

She shook her head. “I can’t think of his name. Bill something.”

Rob opened his mouth to say William Meek, closed it with a snap, and waited. No leading of witnesses. When she didn’t say anything more, he ventured, cautious, “Did the man have a nickname?”

“Besides Bill? I don’t think so. God, that must’ve been ten years ago, before Hal got respectable. They used to sit in the backyard with a case of beer and chant politically incorrect names for all the people they hated, which was anybody not male and not white. All women were cunts and bitches except for the few who were feminazis.”

“Do you remember what Bill looked like?”

“Scrawny and short. I’d recognize him but he’s hard to describe—hair-colored hair, mean little eyes. He wore jeans with a big cowboy buckle.” She shook her head again.

Rob decided to wait until the Kalispell photograph arrived before he pressed her, but he began to feel optimistic. Two nurses walked past the room in jocular conversation. A phone rang three times.

Rob shifted gears. “Did Hal associate with Dennis Wheeler?”

“Dennis? One of the toadies. Dennis thought Hal was some kind of prophet.” Tammy frowned. “I haven’t seen him hanging around much in the past year, though. Maybe Darcy straightened him out. Dennis is a blowhard, but she calls the tune. Lucky Darcy,” she added, bitter.

“What about the other neighbors?”

She shook her head, no. “The girls across the street thought Hal was funny at first, but that didn’t last long. He despised women, and they must’ve caught on. The Iversons next door to them are Democrats, real liberal. They once had a Kerry sign in their yard. Hal snuck out and knocked it down a couple of times, but Mrs. Iverson put it back up. She keeps calling Animal Control when Towser runs loose.”

“That has to stop, Tammy.”

She looked down at her clasped hands. “I know. Tommy will exercise him on the leash. I can’t anymore, he’s too strong for me. I would’ve kept him in the yard, but Hal enjoyed letting Towser out into the street, stirring people up, especially Jim Browning. Jim’s a retired Marine, you know, and Hal tried to recruit him.” Her mouth quirked. “Jim told him to fuck off.”

Rob glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. The doctor would be showing up soon. “Okay, Tammy. Let’s go through it again.”

She made a face but didn’t resist. He let Linda ask the questions while he considered what he’d learned. The phone call was crucial. They had found Hal’s cell phone in his coat pocket. There would be a record of that phone call and others. Rob wanted to get on it, and on the trip to Portland. Where in Portland? The city sprawled. He wished he didn’t have to interview the Tichnors that afternoon.

When Linda came to a pause, he said, “Did Hal know Emil Strohmeyer’s grandsons, Tammy?”

Tammy looked bewildered. “Well, yeah, both of us knew them. We hung out together summers when we were little kids, a bunch of us. Carol, too. I guess you were too young to join in. Hal grew up in the house we live in now. I lived over on Alder. We played kick the can.”

Rob had not come to live with his grandparents until he was nine. Hal, Tammy, and the three Tichnors would have been in high school by then, maybe college. Odd that neither Vance nor Carol had said anything about Hal’s death.

“When did they stop spending their summers in Klalo?”

“I don’t know, Rob. Puberty, probably. I started picking strawberries summers when I was twelve, and I did a lot of baby-sitting, so I wasn’t around all that much. Hal worked for his dad.”

“Doing what?”

“His father owned the old Phillips gas station downtown. He sold it when Hal was in high school, and they built the new station out on Highway 14. Hal always worked for his dad.”

“Hal wasn’t drafted?”

“No, flat feet.”

“Lucky.” Rob’s father was killed in Vietnam the year Rob turned eight. He supposed he ought to check out the Tichnor brothers’ draft status in that era. Vance had probably had a lucky draw at the lottery. Ethan, who was older, would have had an academic exemption.

Linda had resumed her questions. Rob listened critically. She was good, more empathetic than he was. Being a mother herself, she pursued Hal’s threat to kill Tom. By the time Tammy’s doctor appeared to release her, Linda had established strong motives for both Tammy and young Tom.

Hal had conducted a reign of terror. It was hard not to believe he got what he deserved, which was a rotten way to think about a murder victim in the course of an investigation. If the sheriff insisted on mounting a case against Tammy, somebody from the DA’s office would have to interview her doctor. Rob suspected she had been incapable well before midnight.

They took their leave of Tammy after advising her they’d be seeing her again. She planned to spend the night at the Red Hat. Did he mind keeping Tom and Towser? He said no, wondering what he’d let himself in for. He trusted that Earl would finish with the Brandstetter house soon.

Linda had driven a county car and offered Rob a ride to the courthouse.

“It’s almost lunch time,” he said as they made their way down the long hospital corridor. “Go check on Mickey. I’ll walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a copy of the interview after lunch and write up a statement for Tammy to sign.”

“Good. I ought to tell Tom his mother is free to go. See you later.” He headed downstairs to the cafeteria where he found Tom drooping over bad coffee and an old issue of
Willamette Week.
The place bustled with care-givers in colorful polyester uniforms and glum relatives of patients. The noise level was high.

Too high for Rob. He gave Tom the good word and left by the side entrance. Outside the air smelled delectably fresh. A light breeze blew from the east. He threaded his way among the back streets and through blocks of old houses that separated the courthouse from the newer hospital.

When he got to Birch Street there wasn’t much traffic. It was Sunday. He walked along the row of elaborate Victorian houses, thinking about questions he needed to ask Ethan and Vance Tichnor and their sister. The wind had picked up. A plastic grocery bag fluttered against someone’s privet hedge.

Carol had said nothing at all about Hal’s death, yet according to Tammy they had been childhood playfellows. Kick the can was quite a bond. Rob had been good at kick the can, being small and sneaky. Most childhood games favored the large and straightforward.

“Rob! Robert Neill!”

He stopped and focused on the elderly woman in a track suit who had stepped through a neat gate in the hedge. He felt a twinge of dismay. “Mrs. Crookshank, how are you?”

She touched his arm with a liver-spotted hand. “Very well, thanks. You’re looking good, Robert. I hear you’ve been busy.”

He made a polite noise of agreement. Mrs. Crookshank had been his fourth-grade teacher, a reasonably sympathetic woman. Because he couldn’t very well tell her to piss off, he asked after her daughter and diverted her from current events. Maxine Crookshank was a San Francisco investment banker, a source of mystery to her mother, so she chatted about her fiftyish child for several minutes and Rob half listened. He had nothing against Maxine.

He heard the truck accelerate behind them and turned. When it lurched toward them on the wrong side of the street, he shoved Mrs. Crookshank through the open gate, wrapped his arms around her, and rolled until he ended up on top of her on the lawn with his ears ringing.

She was saying something indignant.

“What?” Stupid.

“Was that a gunshot?”

“Yes.” Several gunshots.

“Get off, you’re hurting me. Rob, are you all right?”

“Stay down.” He shoved himself up, pulling his gun from the shoulder holster, and staggered to the gate, but the truck had vanished. Doors opened on both sides of the street. Heads poked out.

He shook his own head to clear it. Dumb bastard. He shoved the gun back in place and reached into his jacket pocket for his cell phone. He couldn’t focus, but he punched 911 anyway and got Jane.

As his tinny voice relayed information about the shots and the truck to the dispatcher, he made his way back to Mrs. Crookshank. A green Datsun pickup, he said. Small. Older. Dirty. Washington plates, something starting with BE, driving erratically.

His former teacher still sprawled on the lawn. She stared up at him. The frame of her glasses had bent and the glasses hung from her left ear.

He knelt beside her and lifted the glasses off gently. “Are you all right?”

“No, I don’t know. My back. You’re bleeding, Robert.”

“I am?”

The phone squawked.

“All over your face.”

He touched his forehead and his hand came away red. “No shit.”

Jane said, “What’s going on?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. Cut my head, I guess.”

“That’s a four-twenty-two? Shall I send an ambulance? Rob?”

He collected his wits. “Yes, they need to check out Mrs. Crookshank. I had to shove her down and she says her back hurts.”

“But you’re okay?”

“Jesus, Jane, I don’t know. I think so. Send the paramedics and a patrol car. And tell them to find the fucking pickup.” He signed off, thrust the phone into his pocket, and sat on the damp grass beside the elderly woman.

“You shouldn’t use bad language.” Her mouth quivered.

He smiled at her. “I know. I’m sorry.”

H
AROLD Brandstetter had had a tight focus—or a narrow mind—so his books were a disappointment to one who had cut her teeth on the Library of Congress Subject Heading Index.

Meg noticed the German-language Bible right away. It was an anomaly among the ranks of military histories, right-wing rants, conspiracy theories, pop biographies of political hacks, and how-to books on wilderness survival and bomb building. The fiction, all paperback, consisted of paranoid thrillers of the Tom Clancy ilk.

Hal had claimed to be a Libertarian, but Meg saw no evidence that he had studied John Stuart Mill or any of the classic theorists of small government. Or even Ayn Rand. Of course, that didn’t mean much. He’d probably looked at the more recent proponents. Meg had met a born-again Christian who had never read St. Matthew.

Hal did have an assortment of handbooks that dealt with evaluation and pricing of antiques, including coins, guns, and cars, and one or two university press paperbacks on Indian artifacts. None of the books except the Bible had intrinsic value. Whatever his preoccupations, Harold Brandstetter had not been a book collector. But he had been a gun collector, predictably, with stacks of gun magazines, and he had been interested in the idea of collecting.

Meg flipped through the Bible, no easy task wearing latex gloves, and noted a number of lists and yellowed clippings. Most of them had been stuffed between the opening pages and were worth a closer look. She set the tome with its dark gothic type aside, with a Post-it that said “Important.”

When she was satisfied with her book categories, which didn’t take long, she began sorting printouts onto the bare surface of the dining room table. She could hear noises from the office and the master bedroom down the hall. Earl Minetti and Jeff Fong were completing the forensic work.