Death Qualified Part 15

"That's opinion, too," he said without hesitation.

"Not the Lucas I used to know. Not dragging a girl over that lava like that. Not the sock in the jaw hard enough to break her neck, her jaw, and two teeth. He didn't have any marks on his hands, by the way, but he could have used a rock, or a branch, something. River washed away that kind of evidence, too."

Barbara remembered all the accounts she had read of the murder and asked, "You haven't closed the case, have you?"

"Nope."

Unhappily she gazed at the map. The contour lines revealed the steepness of the terrain out there, and again she thought of Halleck Hill Road with no visibility more than a hundred feet.

"How did anyone happen to find the car?

Seems it could have stayed hidden for months."

"Ranger spotted it." He put his long, square finger on the map again.

"See here. Route 242, they call it the Scenic Route these days. Crookeder than a c.o.o.n dog's hind leg. Anyway, here on the pa.s.s there's an observatory built out of lava, in the middle of the lava fields. From the building you can see Mt. Jefferson, Black b.u.t.te, the North Sister, Three Finger Jack.. .. There are slits in the walls with names so you know what you're looking at, but for folks from these parts, it's just a good place to stop for a bite to eat, coffee, and to have a look around. We mostly all do it, no matter how many times we've been up that way. So this ranger is going to stop up there and eat his lunch, have his coffee, and naturally he has his binoculars.

He's taking a look around, and he spots something that's out of place. Right about here." He pointed south of the pa.s.s.

"It's ten miles downhill, but a trick of the sun made it possible, I guess. Sun flas.h.i.+ng off the chrome of a car in a place where a car shouldn't be. And by then, of course, everyone was on the lookout for the girl and the car. At first he thought the car was in trouble where the road washed last spring. So anyway he called in, and other guys closer to the spot went in and found it." He nodded at the map.

"Used to be that road wound in and out of the lava beds and joined up with forest service roads or logging roads and you could make it all the way in to Eugene eventually. Guess you still can, but on foot these days."

"Sheriff," Barbara said then, "thanks. You've been more than generous. I appreciate it."

"I'd guess you won't want to call me as a witness," he said, and again a shrewd glint was in his eyes.

"You'd guess right. At least at this point."

"Well, when you called, I figured you'd want some of the stuff we've got together. Autopsy report on the girl, times, a map, things of that sort. I got it together in case."

He pulled a large manila envelope from his desk and slid it across to her.

"Is the name of the tracker in here?"

He nodded.

"And the psychiatrist in Colorado, the one whose plates he stole?"

For the first time he was surprised.

"Afraid not. But it's an easy name to remember. Brandy wine. Dr. Ruth Brandy wine."

FOURTEEN.

the kendricks farm was nearly twenty miles out of Bend. As they drove, Barbara remembered spending a week out on the high desert in her elementary school days.

A field trip to Malheur Preserve where shallow, salty lakes had been swarming with birds, egrets, whooping cranes, even pelicans; she could no longer remember all the different species, but at the time it had seemed miraculous to travel over the desert and find waterfowl by the thou sands. Today there was no sign of birds; the desert was dun-colored as far as she could see, dead-looking as far as she could see, and always ringed with the never-ending b.u.t.tes and mountains. Wherever you are out here, she thought suddenly, you're in the middle of a ring of mountains.

The roads were like systems of veins, the main trunk, a U.S. highway, then a state road, now a smaller one still, and from there they turned again onto a gravel driveway.

And now the nerve center, she thought, when they came to a stop before the farm house. It was painted white, neatly maintained, and shaded with tired cottonwood trees that drooped in the heat.

Amy Kendricks met them on the porch. She said h.e.l.lo to Frank and took Barbara's hand in both of hers and held it while she studied Barbara's face. She was a capable woman, Barbara thought, not fat, but strong with muscular arms and strong, firm hands. She was deeply sun burned; her hair was streaked with gray, cut short. As soon as her husband appeared, her suntan looked almost like pallor compared with his. He was like a tree trunk, brown, hard, deeply carved. He shook hands with Frank, said h.e.l.lo to Barbara, but did not offer her his hand.

"Come in," Amy said then.

"I made up some iced tea. It's cooler inside, but not very much."

It felt a lot cooler at first. The house was dim; the blinds and drapes were closed against the glare and heat, and a large fan hummed on the floor. The overstaffed furniture was covered with pale green and tan cotton covers; it was a very comfortable room with books on tables, flowers in a vase, and everywhere pictures of the children, of Nell, of another couple with children, no doubt her daughter and family.. .. There was one of Nell and a man who must have been Lucas; Barbara looked at that picture with interest he looked as bland and innocent as a schoolboy.

A pitcher of iced tea and gla.s.ses were on a tray on a coffee table. Amy began to pour; she looked at Frank.

"Sugar, lemon?" Then, while she was adding a slice of lemon to his gla.s.s, she said, as if addressing the tea tray, "You should know, Ms. Holloway, Nell is relieved that you'll be helping out. And we think of Nell as our daughter. We love her like a daughter. Both of us."

John Kendricks looked somewhat embarra.s.sed, but he nodded.

"We just want you to know," Amy went on, forgetting now to busy her hands with the tea things, "she has our complete support and confidence. We'll do anything at all that we can to help her and the children. Anything." She went back to pouring tea for them all, and apparently it demanded her complete concentration. She let her husband recount what happened the night that Lucas showed up.

As it turned out, they were able to add little if anything to what Barbara and Frank already had heard from others.

He had shown up exhausted, road dirty, unshaved. They already had had their dinner, but Amy fixed dinner for him while he showered and shaved. He kept his backpack with him and didn't seem to have anything except that. He had acted like a man on the run, spooked by a car in the driveway, jumpy as a jackrabbit.

"About the pack," Barbara said, interrupting John.

"What kind was it? Big, on a frame? What?"

"Not one like hikers carry all their gear in for a week or two in the mountains, but bigger than a day pack." He held up his hands indicating midway between the two types.

"Did you pick it up?"

He shook his head.

"Amy started to reach for it, and he was there quick as a flash, got it first. It wasn't filled to the top, not bulging like some you see. Can't say much more than that about it because I wasn't paying that much attention then. And we didn't pressure him to talk because we took it for granted that he'd be here for a couple of days, time enough to catch up the next day. He was too tired to talk Monday night. Nearly fell asleep before he was done eating. And Tuesday morning he took off again."

He finished with a dull voice and looked at the water running dizzily down the side of the pitcher on the table.

"And he didn't know about Carol?" Barbara asked.

"How did you tell him?"

Amy touched her husband's hand, and she said, "He went to the mantel, the pictures. And he said, who's the little girl. I thought he'd pa.s.s out when I told him it was his daughter."

"Was that Monday night?"

"Tuesday morning. I don't think he saw anything Mon day night. I thought, the way he acted, that he meant to go straight over there and see Nell, see his children. He said he had to leave right now, this minute, and not to say he'd been here if anyone asked. And I just a.s.sumed he meant to go home and see the daughter he never even knew he had." For the first time the hurt that Amy was carrying surfaced; she looked down swiftly, her eyes filling with tears.

There was very little more. As they got up to leave, Barbara asked, "What about his car when he got here?

Did he put it in the garage, seem concerned about it?"

"Nope," John Kendricks answered.

"Didn't even lock it." He drew in a breath and said, "Whatever those people were looking for had to be in the pack. And it didn't weigh much; he carried it over his arm real easy like."

Frank cleared his throat; when Barbara glanced at him, he said, "Nothing about searching the house or the car came out at the grand jury hearing. Nothing about the backpack. Just when he showed up here and when he left.

And the fact that no one told Nell when to expect him.

Tony got a bit testy about that, in fact."

"He tried to make me say I warned her he'd be there on Sat.u.r.day, that's why I wanted the kids out on Friday.

But I never said that. I didn't know where he was, why he hadn't already showed up."

"They'll pound on that nail again," Barbara said in warning. They left then, after Barbara told them she would be back before the trial started. And would they help or hinder the trial, she wondered, settling herself in the Buick once more. Help, she decided; it would be too unnatural for parents to maintain loyalty to a daughter-in-law who they believed had killed their son. And Tony would say, for the sake of the innocent grandchildren, they would try to protect her. She leaned back and closed her eyes as the car raised a cloud of dust.

"You want some lunch?" Frank asked when they were back on the highway. It was over a hundred degrees. She shook her head.

"Me too. Let's head for the mountains, Sisters."

Dust devils danced across the drab wheat fields, water mirages teased on the blacktop road, and the heat mounted.

Barbara's lips were so dry they felt as if they were cracking.

It would be cooler in the mountains, she told herself; it had to be cooler in the mountains. She closed her eyes against the glare.

In her mind's eye the image of a hunched figure in black appeared, dragging a rope with a bound girl, over lava that was cruelly sharp,-razor sharp, leaving a b.l.o.o.d.y, gory trail.. ..

She jerked awake, free of the beginnings of a nightmare.

They had started to climb the mountain now, but it was not yet any cooler. They had lunch in the cafe with llama pictures on the walls; afterward, Frank drove past the Eagleton ranch turnoff, then made a right turn, heading west, back home. On the summit of the pa.s.s he stopped, and they got out to look at the observatory made from lava rock, an imposing, ugly, black and brown building. Neither had the energy to climb the stairs to enter it. Instead, they stood at the guard rail at the parking area and looked out at the forest, down there where Lucas had stopped his car, where the girl had been killed. Today the air was hazy with smoke--a forest fire was out of control in the wilderness area south of here--and visibility was too bad to see much of anything. Barbara was not convinced that anyone could have seen ten miles even if the air had been crystal clear that day. To her eyes it was all forest, wave after wave of rolling treetops dropping ever lower, in a pattern that repeated endlessly, intersected by rivers of stilled black lava, and then all was fuzzed by haze, like a j.a.panese landscape.

"Let's go home," she said abruptly, too hot and too discouraged to want to see anything else, to want to talk.

Frank gave her a swift, appraising look, then wordlessly got back into the car and started the engine. The road deteriorated immediately after they left the lookout spot.

The switchbacks came closer together, and curves were posted fifteen miles an hour, ten miles, and it seemed impossible that two cars could pa.s.s each other.

"Deadman's Grade," Frank said, but he was holding the steering wheel tightly, concentrating on the road, not at all trying to make a joke.

The heat continued for the next four days. The air cooled when the sun went down, but it was relative; cooler now meant eighty degrees at night. On Friday Bailey Novell came back with some preliminary reports. He was driving a battered Ford sedan, and trailing along behind him was a flatbed truck with wooden sides. A tall young man climbed down and stood at the hood of the truck grinning.

He had long, curly brown hair, deep dimples, and very blue eyes. He was so muscular he made Bailey look frail in comparison, and he was so young he made Bailey and Barbara look old in comparison, she thought. It was fine for Bailey, sixty and showing every year of it, but she was not happy with the idea that this young man made her feel more tired than the heat warranted.

Barbara looked from Bailey to the young man and back with raised eyebrows.

"This is Lucky Rosner," Bailey said.

"He works for Clovis Woods Products. Thought you might want a word with him." Bailey's eyes were twinkling, and he was grinning almost as widely as Lucky Rosner. He was altogether too pleased with himself, Barbara thought suspiciously. It was as unnatural for anyone to be grinning in such heat as it was unnatural for that young man to be so pretty.

"Hi," she said.

"I'm Barbara Holloway. Come on in.

Dad's around back. He'll want to hear it too, whatever it is."

Bailey looked past her and said h.e.l.lo to her father, who walked out at that moment, and they all stood in the drive way while the young man told them about last June.

"You see, me and Pete Malinski were going out on a job and these two guys came up and stopped us. They said they wanted to play a joke on a lady friend of a friend of theirs, and they wanted to hire us to go along with it.

What they said first was they wanted to rent our truck and gear for a day. That's all. And Pete and me, we knew it'd be our necks if they did that. I mean old man Clovis would have had our skins for something like that. We said no way. Then they said how about hiring one of us to drive, let one of them go out and play this trick, and the other guy would stay up there in Salem with whoever didn't go.

Me. Pete drove and the guy told him where to go and all.

Me and the other guy hung out in a pool hall. They paid all expenses, gas and whatnot, and two hundred each for us. We didn't see any-harm in it."

When he paused, Barbara asked, "So you don't know what they actually did? Where's Pete now?"

"Gone to his brother's wedding, down in Ashland. Be back in a couple of weeks, but I can tell you what he told me, if you want."

"Oh, we want," Barbara muttered.

"Go on."

"So they come out here somewheres, and they pretend they're going to cut down a big old fir tree, that's all. The lady comes and brings out a gun and shoots at them, and they take off. End of joke. Some joke, Pete said. They could have got themselves killed."

Barbara glared at Bailey as if it were his fault that Lucky Rosner found life so enjoyable. Bailey wagged his finger at her, loving every minute of this. Her father was no help; he was leaning against the porch rail, not missing a thing, but not interfering, either. She looked back toward Lucky.

"Okay, I'll bite, what next?" she asked.

"Well, me and Pete, we kept wondering about all that stuff, how much money they paid us and all, and we got to thinking that pretending to cut the tree down wasn't what they really wanted to begin with. That was like a cover, know what I mean?"

She nodded.

"Cover for what?"

"See, Pete says when they got out to the place, this guy said he wanted to climb the tree and attach a rope, make it look legit. Like I said, they had the company truck, all the gear, and so what the h.e.l.l, Pete thinks. Why not? The guy gets on the harness and up he goes. He can climb, but he's not a pro, Pete says, and he's pretty shaky when he gets down again. He just sort of slung the rope over the branch, but it was enough to fool the lady when she got home."

Barbara's eyes were narrowed now as she frowned at Lucky.

"You think he wanted to put something else up there? Was that it?"