visit with her.”
“Was her name Dempsey?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“What I mean is, she could have been a widow or divorced and remarried.”
“Uh huh. Never did ask. He didn’t talk a lot about himself, sir.
“Do you remember where he was born, Mr. Scoby?”
Scoby looked up with surprise and then grinned. “Born?” he said.
“Yes sir. Where he was from.”
“Sorry to laugh, it just seemed like a strange question. Matter of fact I do remember that. He was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. I remember it from his job application. Looked it up on a map once, just out of curiosity.”
“Anything else. College? Previous jobs .
Scoby stared at him for several seconds, then shook his head no.
“Right,” Keegan said and rose to leave. “Mr. Scoby, you’ve been a lot of help. As I told you, we’re just trying to clean up some loose ends, put this to bed once and for all. Thanks again for your time.”
As they reached the front door, Scoby said, “There was one thing about Fred. I’ve never told anybody this, not even the board down at the bank. Fred had a letter of recommendation from the First Manhattan Bank in New York. I hired him because I liked him and because he had a good, strong letter. He seemed real smart and honest, told me he’d been looking for work for a long time. This was the heart of the Depression, remember.
I forgot about the letter until about a month later I came across it in my desk drawer and just kind of force of habit, I called the bank. They never heard of Fred Dempsey.”
“And you kept him on?”
“Well, times bein’ what they were, lots of people were desperate. By that time I had found him to be an honest man and a hard worker, easily living up to the recommendation. Besides, Roger and Weezie were in the picture by then. I decided to judge for myself rather than broach the subject with him. Never said anything more about it to anybody till now.”
“I appreciate your confidence. Thanks again. Good luck, Mr. Scoby.”
“Same to you, Mr. Keegan.”
On the way back to the plane, Conklin turned off the main road and drove across a bridge, parking on the opposite side of the river.
“Thought you might like to see this. Here’s where the car went off, right here,” Chief Conklin said. “Must’ve skidded. The car was he pointed fifty yards downstream, “. . . about there when we found it. Weezie was still in it. She had a hold of Fred’s jacket. He must’ve been swept away. The river was going crazy that night.”
Keegan looked around. It was a barren stretch. There were no houses nearby, only the railroad tracks that paralleled the river. Isolated. If Fred Dempsey had wanted to fake his death, this was the perfect place.
“I didn’t get much,” Dryman said as they crawled back in the plane. “Too long ago. People really don’t remember him all that well. Want to hear something funny? That same night, the night of the bank robbery? There was a big fight in a hobo camp down the road. Two people were killed.”
“A hobo camp? Where?”
“Lafayette.”
“No kidding. Do you think you can find Lafayette, H.P.? And a real airport? I’m getting tired of landing in people’s backyards.”
“What’re we going to Lafayette for?”
“I want to talk to the coroner.”
* * *
Elmo Taggert. who was both funeral director and coroner in Lafayette, picked them up at the airport in his hearse.
“After you called, I took the trouble of digging out a copy of the report I filed on Louise Scoby,” he said. He handed Keegan a brown envelope. Keegan took out the report and scanned it.
“She was dead when she hit the water?” Keegan asked.
“Yes sir. Probably snapped her neck when the car hit the water or maybe when it went off the road. Broke her neck clean as a dry branch. Death was instant, that’s why her lungs were dry.”
“Was there a bruise?”
“Had several bruises, what you’d expect. The car fell eighteen feet before it struck water. I figure she was looking back or maybe out the window when it hit. Kind of made a twisting break.”
“A twisting break, you say?”
“Yep.” He cracked his hand from the wrist and snapped his fingers at the same time. “Crack! Just like that,” he said. Dryman grimaced.
They drove in silence for a few minutes more. The report did not reveal too much more.
“There’s one thing I guess I should tell you, although I don’t really see that it makes any difference,” Taggert went on. “I’ve known Ben Scoby since high school, Mr. Keegan. Didn’t want to see him get hurt any more than he was already, so I didn’t put it in, but. . . Louise Scoby had semen in her vagina when she died. Obviously she and Fred Dempsey had sexual intercourse just before they were killed.”
