“That’s right. It could’ve been suicide-that’s what her lawyers’ll claim-but we don’t see it that way.”
“How’d it happen, then? She was threatening him with the weapon, he grabbed it and yanked it out of her hands, and the barrel jabbed into his mouth as it went off?”
Davis nodded. “Hair triggers on that shotgun, the pull lightened down to less than four pounds’ pressure. Wouldn’t have taken much of a yank with her finger on the foretrigger to fire the round when he jerked it up into his face as he was falling backward.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Hers on the grip, stock, and barrel. Three of ’em, nice and clear.”
“None on the trigger?”
“Smudges.”
“Cullrane’s prints on the weapon?”
“None that were clear enough to identify.”
“How about burn marks on his hands?”
“No,” Davis said, “but that doesn’t prove anything. He didn’t have to’ve grabbed the hot barrel. Could’ve caught the grip close to the chamber area.”
“What about this drug, clonazepam, she had in her system? Did it show up in Cullrane’s, too?”
“Yes, but so what? She could’ve spiked his drink and hers both.”
“Or Pollexfen could’ve done it. He made the drinks.”
“She says he did. Says he arranged the whole thing to get rid of her brother and frame her. You buy into that?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“Hell, man, you were out in the hallway with Pollexfen and the secretary when Cullrane died. And you were the one who used the keys to get into the library. The old man couldn’t have done it, now could he?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. I don’t suppose there was anything unusual on the weapon-scratches, marks, some kind of attachment that didn’t belong?”
“Nothing,” Davis said. “Good condition, clean, oiled. What’re you thinking? Fix an antique shotgun to fire by some trick? Can’t be done.”
“No,” I said, “I guess it can’t.”
A t the agency I asked Tamara to find out what she could about the aviation company business five or six years ago, and about the drug clonazepam. It didn’t take her long in either case.
The aviation company turned out to be a Bay Area outfit, Greenfield Aeronautics. Hostile takeover by a larger outfit, Drexel Aviation. Head of Drexel’s board of directors: Gregory Pollexfen. Hints of bribery and coercion, but nothing proven and no criminal charges or lawsuits filed. Cullrane must have had some documentary evidence against Pollexfen to make the blackmail work. Had Pollexfen found out where it was hidden? Another possibility: whatever the crime, the statute of limitations had run out and he couldn’t be prosecuted for it any longer. And another: his hatred for Cullrane had grown powerful enough to outweigh any concern over the consequences of his illegal business actions. In any event, the information gave substance to Angelina Pollexfen’s claim.
As for clonazepam-
“It’s a benzodiazepine drug,” Tamara said, reading from her computer screen. “Used to treat epilepsy, anxiety disorders, panic attacks and night terrors, chronic fatigue syndrome, a few other things. Stimulates the action of gamma-aminobutyric acid on the central nervous system.”
“Sure it does,” I said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Says here clonazepam is a highly potent variety of benzodiazepine because of strong anxiolytic properties and euphoric side effects. Use of alcohol while taking it intensifies these side effects.”
“Which are?”
“Impaired motor function, impaired coordination and balance, disorientation, something called anterograde amnesia.”
“Short-term memory loss, probably.”
“Add all that together and you got one mother of a hangover. You’d have to be crazy to mix up clonazepam and martinis on purpose.”
“Unless you weren’t planning to drink them yourself. Unless you had a good reason for serving them to two other people.”
I sat closed inside my office, brooding. Pollexfen, not his wife-my gut said it and my head said it. But how could he have arranged the murder? There had to be some angle none of us had thought of yet. It wouldn’t be fancy or complicated, either. Simple. The kind of thing that’s obvious once you put all the facts together and look at them in the right way.
Yeah. Simple, obvious.
Except that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with any plausible explanation.
21
JAKE RUNYON
Los Alegres, early afternoon.
Duty and obligation dictated he take what he’d found out straight to the local police, but he was reluctant to do that just yet. He’d dealt often enough with small-town cops, been on the job himself for enough years, to know what kind of reception he’d get. The lieutenant, St. John, would be skeptical, tell him he didn’t have enough hard evidence against Tucker Devries to warrant a BOLO, much less an APB. Plus he’d have to withhold some of what he’d found out because it had been obtained through a technically illegal search. If he could locate Devries first, he’d have a stronger case. Maybe not strong enough for the law to act immediately, but enough to get them moving. And to give himself a couple of options, if he wanted to pursue them. Confront Devries, try to prod him into an admission of guilt. Or put him under surveillance, stop him before he did any more damage to the Henderson brothers.
There were half a dozen motels in Los Alegres and vicinity, another couple of dozen within a fifteen-mile radius. Runyon began the canvass as soon as he’d made a list from the Yellow Pages in the county directory. The odds were only fair that Devries had decided to hole up in a motel somewhere around here rather than drive back and forth to Vacaville. He could be sleeping in that van of his, or crashing with somebody who didn’t know what he was up to. But there were no other leads to follow. A motel search was the only proactive idea Runyon could come up with.
The places in Los Alegres first, and those drew blanks. North, then, to a stretch of motels at or near freeway interchanges. He skipped the more expensive chain places. Given the kind of work Devries did and the apartment building he lived in, he wouldn’t have much money to spend on lodging. Or much interest in where he stayed beyond its proximity to Los Alegres; his whole focus was on his private vendetta. If he’d rented a motel room anywhere, it would be the cheap variety.
Two hours, nine stops-nine more blanks. Number ten was outside a little town eight miles northeast of Los Alegres, a twelve-unit, no-frills place built in a half square around a lumpy macadam parking lot. Twin Palms Court. But there was only one palm on the property and it looked ripe for a chain saw. Owner with a sense of humor or a substandard IQ.
The office was a tiny room bisected by a counter and presided over by a thin wisp of a man with gray hair just as wispy; a goiterlike growth on one side of his neck gave his head a misshapen cast. His smile was as thin as the rest of him. The bored, indifferent type.
Runyon had used the same opening so often he repeated the words by rote: “I’m looking for a young man, late twenties, dark blond hair, drives a white Dodge Caravan. You have a guest in the past week or so who fits that description?”
“This fella a friend of yours?”
“No.”
“What you want with him, then?”
“Do you know him?”
