“What’s going on?” Burton asked, as he opened the entryway door.
“I just talked to your wife,” Ernie explained, “She said you were working late. I hope you don’t mind the interruption.”
Burton led Ernie back to his private office. Switching on the light revealed his damningly empty desktop. It was clear Burton wasn’t really working and that he hadn’t been.
“I was actually just finishing up and about to go home,” he said lamely, going over to his door and making a show of taking his jacket off the hanger. He draped his tie around the back of his neck. “I have a few minutes. What can I do for you?”
“Sheriff Brady told me you were out at the Rocking P earlier today,” Ernie said.
Burton nodded. “That’s right. Why?”
“You already know about the other body in the glory hole?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I do. I think the shock of finding out about that pretty much unhinged Ivy. It’s probably some poor old wetback who fell into the hole before Uncle Harold got around to fencing it up.”
“I doubt it’s a wetback,” Ernie Carpenter said firmly. “In fact, I expect to have a positive I.D. within days.”
Burton Kimball’s eyes blinked in surprise. “No kidding. Good work. Anyone I might know?”
Refusing to accept Burton’s hints about leaving, Ernie Carpenter settled into a chair. “How old were you when your father left home?” he asked.
Kimball seemed more than a little taken aback by the detective’s blunt question. A pained expression flashed across his face. “Me? I wasn’t even born yet. My mother was pregnant with me when my father went off to California looking for a job and never came back.”
“Who told you that story? That your father went to California, I mean.”
“Uncle Harold and Aunt Emily, I suppose. I don’t understand. Why are you asking about my father? What’s going on?” Dropping his jacket onto the surface of the desk, Burton Kimball sank back down in his chair.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Burt,” Ernie said kindly. “Your father never made it to California. Or, if he did, he must have come back home sometime later on.”
“He came back? …” Burton began, but then comprehension slowly dawned. “You can’t mean it! Surely, you’re not saying it’s him! The skeleton in the glory hole is my father?”
Ernie Carpenter nodded. “I’m sorry to have to break it to you like this.”
Burton’s ruddy complexion paled. “But how can you know that? How can you tell for sure?”
Ernie reached in his pocket and pulled out the newly cleaned dog tags, which he dropped lightly on the desk in front of Burton Kimball. For a moment, the other man stared at them without moving. Then, carefully, gingerly, as though the metal might be red-hot, he picked up the chain and held it up to the light.
“We also have dental records to go by,” Ernie said. “Those should cinch it. I thought you’d want to know.”
Abruptly, Burton spun his chair around. He sat with his back turned to Ernie Carpenter. Staring up at the soothing water-color garden scene Linda had given him last Christmas to hang on the bland wall behind his desk, he tried unsuccessfully to blink back tears. Ernie waited through the silence. “I always secretly hoped he was dead,” Burton Kimball croaked at last. “As a little kid, that was the only way I could cope. His being dead was the only reason I knew that justified his going off and leaving me alone like that. I wondered what was wrong with me that he’d do a thing like that And how could he tell something was wrong with me before I was even born?”
“Burton,” Ernie began.
But the younger man continued, ignoring the interruption. “And late at night I’d tell myself stories about him, about how he’d been run down by a train somewhere or how he’d drowned in the ocean and been washed out to sea. But deep in side, I always figured he was alive somewhere, living with a beautiful new wife and new children.
I always hoped he’d come back for me someday, like a knight on a white charger, and that he’d take me to live with them. He never did.”
Burton Kimball fell silent. It was a long time before Ernie Carpenter spoke again. “Was there any bad blood between your father and your uncle Harold?”
“Bad blood?” Burton repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean? And why would there be? Uncle Harold was my mother’s brother. After my mother died, from the time I was a baby, he and Aunt Emily took care of me. As far as I know, that’s all there was to it.”
Burton turned back around and faced the detective, a concerned frown etching his face. “Why are you asking?”
“Because,” Ernie answered simply, “they both ended up in the same place, dead in the bottom of a glory hole. From what I saw today, I’d say they were both murdered. Fifty years apart, but the same way. The killer or killers heaved rocks down at them from above.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Burton Kimball said. “What would the connection be?”
The room grew very still. “You,” Ernie Carpenter said softly.
“Me!”
“I’ve heard from several people that you and your uncle quarreled shortly before noon on Tuesday. I understand you stormed out of your office that afternoon and didn’t show up again until you came to the Election Night party looking for Harold Patterson.”
“That’s right. I saw his car in the parking lot and…”
“Where did you go when you first left your office?”
