Killed on the Rocks Read online

  Ralph said, “Yeah, what have you got?” When I told him, he said, “That’s interesting. We’d better check him for a fishing license.” He started to laugh. It wasn’t the healthiest laugh I’d ever heard.

  “Later,” I said. “Now let’s get the evidence in the envelope and drag the sled to the house.”

  Ralph sobered instantly. “Sorry. I was just thinking that this is somehow worse than a car crash.” He reached in his pocket and brought out a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag. That was even better than an envelope. Ralph had even thought to open it before we left. He squeezed the top to widen the mouth, and I dropped in the thread.

  “I’ve seen highway accidents smeared out over a quarter of a mile of pavement that didn’t hit me as badly as this. It bothers me that I can’t figure out why.”

  I shook the line off the glove into the bag. Carefully, Ralph sealed the top. He was very deft, even with heavy gloves on.

  “It’s because somebody made this happen,” I told him. “An accident is tragic. What this is is evil.”

  “Evil,” Ralph said.

  “A man is dead in a way that it’s impossible for him to be dead. As far as we can see. The person who made this happen is smart, and contemptuous of life. You got a better word?”

  If he did, he wasn’t offering it. He picked up the loop of rope at the front of the toboggan and looked at me. I grabbed the loop with my clean, left hand, and together we pulled toward the house.

  Norman opened the door for us. “That him?” he asked sourly.

  No, I thought, these are your Welcome Wagon gifts, how nice to have you in the neighborhood.

  “Yeah, Uncle Fred,” Ralph said. “Clear the hallway, okay? Clear the path through the whole house. No reason anybody has to see him like this.”

  “They want to. I want to. Pay our respects.”

  “Later,” I said. “Meantime, just clear the way, okay?”

  He gave me a dirty look, then looked at Ralph who nodded, gave me another dirty look, then closed the door in our faces. I decided that uncle or not, the time was rapidly coming when Fred Norman’s ass was going to become intimately acquainted with the toe of my shoe.

  While we were waiting, I pulled off my gloves and threw them down on the top step. The wind bit the flesh of my hands like a school of airborne piranhas, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to see that the leather and Scotchguard had held, and my hands were clean.

  The door opened. Norman held it for us while Ralph and I took the front and back of the toboggan like a stretcher and carried it through the house. This was a calculated risk. Fortunately, our passenger did not drip. We carried him through the house, around the back stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, across a patch of snow that had the prints of a dog’s paws in it, into a roomy toolshed out back.

  The toolshed had been picked because it was the best place to preserve the body until someone who knew what the hell he was doing could see it. It was cold, so it wouldn’t spoil, and it sealed well against the predations of wild animals.

  Uncle Fred Norman may have been a royal pain, but he could follow instructions. The big worktable in the shed had been cleared and covered with a clean white sheet. There were a stack of sheets, several rolls of paper towels, and a new package of plastic leaf bags close at hand. A bare electric light directly above the table illuminated the shed.

  We put the toboggan down on the floor, then lifted Dost to the table. Ralph started shifting around on his feet like a man who has just remembered an appointment.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll leave you to do what you have to do—”

  I looked at him. “Are you an idiot or what?” I asked him. “Ralph, old pal, let me remind you that we did not in fact talk to the sheriff. Remember? He did not make me a special deputy. I am a suspect in this case. Okay, these are unusual circumstances, I have some experience as an MP and with the stuff I’ve done for the Network, so you’re letting me help out. But believe me, leaving a suspect alone with the corpse is a good way to get yourself in deep, deep trouble.”

  Ralph sighed with resignation. “So I stay,” he said.

  “You stay, you help, and you take pictures.”

  Now he pulled off his own gloves and took out the camera. “Let’s get it over with,” he said.

  This part of the process was every bit as grisly as what had gone on outside, but at least it was more comfortable. Uncle Fred had set a kerosene heater going for us; in a little while, we could work in rolled-up shirt sleeves. There was a sink, too, with running water that approached warmth.

  The first thing to do was to get Dost’s clothes off. We had to cut some of them off him. We were careful not to cut along seams. Things accumulate in the seams of clothing, and a good lab could perhaps learn things from the small particles they might find there. The clothes went into one of the leaf bags. I was going to put a tie band on it, but Ralph waved me off, took the bag, and tied three tight knots in the thing—his own special brand.

  “This way, the only way somebody’s going to get at these clothes is to rip the bag,” he said. “No secret peeks.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “Not bad for an idiot, at least.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was just built-up tension. This isn’t my favorite way to spend a winter morning.”

  Ralph cracked up. He apparently had a lot of tension built up, too. Pretty soon, I joined him.

  “Shh,” I said, still laughing. “They’ll hear us.”

  “So who’s the deputy sheriff around here? Who’s in charge?”

  “We sound like a couple of ghouls.”

  Ralph said, “Yeah,” then giggled a few times, then sobered. “Ghouls. Let them go do what we just did. Especially what you just did. Yeesh. I thought I was tough.”

  “Tough has nothing to do with it,” I told him.

  Ralph asked me what I meant, but I didn’t answer him.

  I threw another paper towel into the nearly filled leaf bag and said, “I think that’s about as clean as we’re going to get him.”

  “What about the—”

  “I’m not going to touch that. Leave it for the medical examiner, when we re-establish contact with civilization.”

  “Good.”

  “Let’s turn him over.” It only took a second. We were getting good at this.

  Ralph took some pictures. “Get that area around his shoulders,” I said. “Make sure you get those marks.”

  There were bruises, recent ones, on Dost’s back, two lines running from the deltoids close to his neck in straight diagonals to his armpits.

  “What the hell are those?” Ralph asked. “They’re not like the other stuff, the post-mortem ...”

  “Dependent lividity. That’s the blood pooling in the parts of his body lying lowest after he was dead.” I frowned. “No, this isn’t that.”

  “I can’t think of a way somebody would get bruises like that,” Ralph said.

  “Unless he was in the habit of beating himself with a stick.”

  Ralph said he doubted it. I agreed.

  It was time to turn Dost back over. Ralph asked me how I knew all this stuff. I told him that I had been a very enthusiastic MP with a very enthusiastic superior officer. That was true. What I didn’t tell him was that I’d picked up a lot of stuff hanging around mystery writers, too.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s cover him up.”

  We spread a sheet over the remains of G. B. Dost, late billionaire, turned off the kerosene heater, and went back to the house.

  The whole gang was waiting for us as we stepped into the kitchen. Almost the whole gang.

  “Hello,” I said. “Any sign of Barry?”

  “Nobody will find him before he wants to be found,” Jack Bromhead said.

  Aranda Dost had returned to the fold. I was glad. I should never have let her run away on her own like that. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she was not now crying. “What took you so long?” she demanded. “What have you been d
oing out there?”

  “Trying to find out as much as we can without messing up the evidence for the experts. When they finally get here.”

  “Why take the chance?” It was Haskell Freed in his best clubroom voice. The one that said, “Yes, I’m challenging you, but it’s no big deal, let’s have a drink.”

  “Yes,” Wilberforce chimed in. “You’ve done everything decency could demand. Why don’t you just leave well enough alone until the experts get here?”

  I looked at him. I looked at all of them.

  “Are you serious?” No answer. “Do you people think Ralph and I spent the morning waltzing with a corpse because we liked it? Because of an ego thing?”

  Roxanne, God bless her, gave her head a little shake. The rest of them, Dost people and Network people alike, glared at us.

  “Listen, assholes,” I said. “Get a firm hold on the following fact: We are trapped in this house with a killer. A killer who can do things we can’t understand. A killer who has, under our noses, bumped off one of the most powerful men in the world. Got that so far?”

  Throats were cleared, but I didn’t give anybody a chance to say anything.

  “What makes any of you think this guy is finished? We might not have time to leave it for the experts. There might not be anybody left for the experts to talk to.”

  Fred Norman’s face was red. “Damn you, Cobb, you’re frightening the women.”

  Ralph said, “Shut up, Uncle Fred,” and I wanted to kiss him.

  “Only the women?” I said. “That’s too bad. I wish we all were as scared as I am right now. I suggest from now on you barricade your doors when you’re alone in your rooms, and that none of us ever goes anywhere except in groups of three or more.”

  I paused for a second, and listened to myself. I realized with a shock that unless Barry Dost had offed his old man, I was undoubtedly addressing the killer. Who was undoubtedly eating this up with a spoon.

  “Be careful,” I said.

  Ralph told everyone to hold himself available for questioning this afternoon, and the gang broke up. In groups of three or more.

  11

  ... And find the correct answer hidden somewhere in the puzzle.

  —Jack Narz, “Now You See It” (CBS)

  RALPH AND I SPENT the rest of the morning exploring the house. Roxanne tagged along, immune to the hundreds of hints I threw her way. When I flat out told her to beat it, she told me I’d said groups of three, and she didn’t think I’d be the type to make a rule I wasn’t prepared to follow myself.

  Deputy Ingersoll could have run her off by virtue of his badge, but he was useless. He just grinned and said, “She’s got you there.”

  I turned to Roxanne. “Okay,” I said. “But you keep your mouth shut tight about anything we see or say, or I swear to God, I’ll take you over my knee and spank you.”

  Roxanne made her eyes wide and put her finger in her mouth. “Promise?” she breathed.

  “I want you to promise.”

  “All you have to do is ask me, Cobb. You should know that by now. I promise to keep my mouth shut.”

  Ralph had the master key in his pocket and a lot of enthusiasm for the project. I could understand that. By keeping busy, we wouldn’t give ourselves time to dwell on our little Doctor Frankenstein and Igor act from this morning.

  In the end, I’m not sure Ralph didn’t get the worst of it, since it had fallen to him to play funeral director and usher to those who wanted to see into the shed to view the remains. I stayed in the kitchen and watched them as they came back out. Aranda Dost came back in tears. Ralph practically had to carry her. I don’t think either of them minded. Jack Bromhead had his jaw clenched. Agnes Norman kept shaking her head, nonono, muttering “What an awful thing,” over and over. Uncle Fred looked twenty years older. He seemed absolutely stricken, as though he’d lost a brother or a son.

  And Wilberforce had come back from looking at Dost’s body looking, as usual, as if he had died and been embalmed already. I put Wilberforce high on the list for afternoon questions.

  We decided to start in the basement and work our way up. We were looking for two things: (1) Barry Dost, and (2) anything else that might be of use.

  There was a swimming pool in the basement. It wasn’t Olympic-sized, but it was bigger than what most people have in their backyards. There was a three-meter diving board at one end. The room was steamy, and there was such a smell of chlorine in the air I was afraid my eyebrows were going to turn white.

  We walked around the pool, looking in all the corners. The rest of the place was slick, light-blue tiles and light fixtures. You couldn’t hide a guilty thought in there.

  Roxanne said, “Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Look at this great pool. Swimming and skiing, and I’m not going to get to do either one.”

  “Maybe you could ski down the mountain and get us some help.”

  “Very funny. Unfortunately, all the trails run from the top of the mountain to here. I couldn’t even get to the lift out there without messing up your precious snow.”

  “So why can’t you swim?”

  “‘Groups of three or more,’ remember? What am I supposed to do? ‘Mrs. Dost, is it okay if I organize a pool party? Got any hot dogs and daiquiri mix?’”

  “She’s got you there, too,” Ralph said.

  “You be quiet,” I told him. I turned to Roxanne. “Did you tag along here to help or to complain?”

  “I don’t see why I can’t do both,” she said.

  “As a favor to me, then, try to keep the mix about seventy-thirty in favor of help, okay?”

  “Sure, Cobb.”

  “Good.” We searched the shower room, the changing rooms, found nothing. We tried the rest of the cellar—storage rooms, et cetera. Still no luck.

  On the ground floor, we ran into nothing but resentful looks from the Normans and the other guests.

  Until we went to the gun room. I took a Ziploc bag out of my pocket, and headed for the fishing tackle.

  Roxanne pointed to the bag. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Little piece of fishline,” I said.

  “What’s the brown stuff?”

  I looked at her.

  She gulped. “Oh,” she said. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to try to find out exactly what kind of line it is, and where it came from, so I can figure out what the hell it was doing out there with Dost.”

  “Maybe that thing he was wearing was his fishing jacket or something.”

  I frowned. “God, I never thought of that. You’re probably right. Still, as long as we’re here, let’s take a look.”

  It didn’t take long. The narrow drawers below the racks, like specimen drawers in an entomology lab, bore convenient labels like DRY FLIES or .22 LONG AMMO, but they were all locked. I decided to get the key later, if I needed it. Instead, I looked at the rods racked up against the wall.

  And there it was, on the reel of a long, thick surf-casting rod: messy tangle where someone had too hastily pulled some line free and cut or broke it clumsily. I supposed someone could have broken it. Not easily, though; it was good strong stuff.

  Of course, why someone would keep a surf-casting rod at a mountain lodge four hundred miles from the ocean in the first place was beyond me. It was something we’d have to ask Jack Bromhead.

  After that, we went upstairs. This is where things got tricky. I was dead serious about spotting the killer before he expanded his scope. On the other hand, if we did spot the bastard, I wanted the DA up here to be able to put him away. I didn’t want to go tainting any evidence.

  But warrant or no warrant, we were going to toss the rooms.

  As far as I could figure out, the position was this: Ralph had the master key with Aranda Dost’s knowledge and consent. Therefore, her room and the rooms of everybody who lived here on a regular basis were fair game. The guests’ rooms would take a warrant to search legally, unles
s we had the occupant’s permission to look.

  Without permission, nothing we found could be used in court as evidence. This was definitely true for Ralph, and, I suspected, equally true for me and Roxanne. No, the sheriff hadn’t really made me a deputy, but by virtue of my “assisting” Ralph on the case, I became a “police agent.” Especially if he let me in with that master key.

  What a mess. I should have gone to law school the way my father wanted me to. Wilberforce and Carol Coretti were both lawyers, of course, but not the right kind. Besides, even if they had been, they were still suspects. I would have been silly to follow their advice under the best of circumstances. Even worse, they might have told me there was absolutely no legal way I could look in those rooms.

  And I was going to look in those rooms. The Supreme Court is very august and wise and all that, but I guarantee you, their decisions would be a little different if, instead of sitting safe in a marble edifice in Washington, they had to hold their deliberations snowed in with a homicidal maniac.

  We started with the rooms not technically off limits. The Normans had done their best to turn their quarters in a mansion into a split-level ranch in suburbia. One of them was addicted to milk-glass cherubs and paintings on black velvet of little kids with Big Sad Eyes. I was beginning to understand Fred Norman better. If I lived surrounded by that kind of crap, I’d have to take it out on somebody, too.

  Jack Bromhead’s third-floor room revealed nothing except the fact that the man had resisted at least one of Aranda’s decorating ideas. His bed was an antique, but it was an antique boardinghouse monstrosity. The thing was all iron: legs, headboard, and built-in, open bedspring. There must have been a ton of metal in it.

  Aranda and Dost had adjoining rooms. Aranda had astrological charts, tarot cards, yarrow sticks, and the complete works of Shirley MacLaine. She had her zodiac sign embossed in gold on her diaphragm case.

  I showed it to Roxanne. “What sign is this?”

  “Virgo.”

  “I thought so. On a diaphragm case. The sad thing is, she probably doesn’t even suspect that’s funny.” Dost’s room was exactly like mine; it looked as though someone had first parked there last night. It was depressing that a man with G. B. Dost’s money and power should have made little impression on his surroundings.