“If what?” Obermeyer said hopefully.
“Is there anything I can give Trasker that would bring him back, anything fast?”
“You want him conscious and functioning?”
“I want him conscious and functioning.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve got samples.”
He got up and we followed him through a door to an examining room with a locked glass cabinet. He opened the cabinet with a key on the ring in his pocket and took out an amber pill bottle.
“Take the bottle,” he said. “Three of these with water will work. But no more than three.”
“How fast?” I asked.
“Imagine forty cups of coffee in one gulp,” he said.
Ames and I left him standing next to his examining table. In the outer office we passed the glaring couple. They seemed to be going for the Guinness World Records.
The clouds had thinned out now. I turned on 930 on the radio and listened to Neil Bortz while I drove down the trail. Fifteen minutes later we were at the gate to Kevin Hoffmann’s estate.
We got out and I pushed the button on the stone wall. No one answered. I pushed the button again. This time Stanley came out of the house, adjusted his glasses, and walked down the path to face us through the fence.
“Fonesca,” he said. “I’ve made some calls about you. There are people who think you’re not very interested in living.”
“LaPrince,” I said. “There are people in Louisiana who remember you.”
He paused and shook his head.
“You sure you want to go that way?” he asked, looking at Ames with amusement.
“Tell Hoffmann we’re here,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Stanley said with a shrug, and went back to the house, leaving the door open behind him. There was a click and the gate opened.
Ames and I went up the cobbled path and through the door. Kevin Hoffmann stood just inside the door. There were no lights on. He stood in a patch of sun that came from a window on his right.
He was wearing white designer jeans, a black silk shirt, and a two-day growth of gray stubble. He did not look good. He was in no mood for New York Yankees attire.
“Dutcher,” I said.
Stanley stood back to Hoffmann’s left, facing Ames, who stood facing Stanley. Stanley’s right hand was in his pocket. The pocket looked heavy.
“That is the name I was born with,” Hoffmann said. “How does that change things?”
“Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.
“My parents were very patriotic,” he said. “My father loved this country, loved Lindbergh, Sergeant York, Franklin Roosevelt, Enos Slaughter, and anything about baseball. Are you here to accept my offer?”
Kevin Hoffmann was smiling, but the smile had the hint of a twitch and his words a touch of nervous amusement.
“Your sister love baseball too?”
The smile was gone now.
“My sister’s dead,” he said.
“I know. She was shot two days ago. Claire Elizabeth Dutcher, who changed her name to Claire Collins when she became an actress, who changed her name to Roberta Trasker when she married the man lying upstairs.”
“Yes,” said Hoffmann. “Bill is my brother-in-law. And I have power of attorney. Which, according to my lawyer, means that since he is unable to make decisions on his own because of his illness, I can make all decisions for him.”
“Your sister leave a will?” I asked.
“A…I’m sure she…You think I killed Claire for Bill’s money?”
“It’s a possibility,” I said.
“Bill and Claire have children, grandchildren,” he said. “It’s none of your business but I loved my sister.”
“Who died before I could convince her to get her husband out of here so he could vote on the Midnight Pass issue, which will make you even richer than you are.”
“Time to leave, Fonesca,” he said, taking a step forward.
“Going to make quite a story on television and in the newspapers,” I said. “Ann Rule might even come back here and write a book about this.”
“Stanley,” he said, and Stanley stepped forward.
Stanley and Ames were a few feet apart now, an amused smile on Stanley’s lips, nothing showing on Ames’s face.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Hoffmann turned and walked back into the shadows. Stanley opened the door for us and the three of us marched quietly down the paved driveway while the gate swung open.
Ames and I stepped out.
“‘The meanest thrives the most, where dignity, true personal dignity, abideth not,’” Stanley said through the bars of the gate. He was smiling. “‘A light and cruel world, cut off from all the natural inlets of just sentiment, from lowly sympathy, and chastening truth, where good and evil never have that name.’ Wordsworth.”
He turned and started back toward the house.
“That’s a pair of crazy men,” Ames said.
“Or something like it,” I said, getting in the car.
Ames got in the passenger seat and buckled up.
“So, what do we do?”
“We find a way to get William Trasker out of there before the commission meeting tonight,” I said, shifting into drive and stepping on the gas.
13
“There is enough room in Heaven for every God-loving Christian and all the saints that have been or ever will be,” said Reverend Fernando Wilkens from the pulpit of the Fourth Baptist Church on Tenth Street just off of Orange. “God’s Heaven and bounty show no bounds.”
The walls were brick painted white, with stained-glass windows along both sides of the room depicting stations of the cross.
Directly in front of the pulpit, a simple wooden casket with bronze handles rested on what looked like two sawhorses covered in dark blue velvet.
Ames and I, hats in hand, stood in the back of the air-conditioned church, nearly filled with black men and women and a small sprinkling of whites. I guessed about one hundred fifty people sat listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the deep, confident voice of Reverend Wilkens, dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, his hands on the pulpit, his eyes seeking those below him. Those eyes had met mine when Ames and I entered, but the meeting had only been fleeting.
“Notice,” Wilkens said, holding up his right hand. “I said ‘God-loving’, not ‘God-fearing,’ for the good need never fear God. The problem is that we never think we are good enough. Beware the man or woman who thinks he or she is good enough to enter Heaven. That is self-righteous vanity. We strive to do good. We know the words and commandments of the Lord. We know which we have disobeyed and which we have violated. We know, in fact, my friends, what the right thing to do is. We know that when we transgress we can always ask for forgiveness. We know our Lord is willing to forgive those who truly repent. I said ‘truly’ for the Lord can look into your heart. Your idea of true repentance may be that you are sorry for what you did because it means you won’t be getting into Heaven. No, the only sorry that counts is when you wish you had not hurt another human being. We can but hope and follow the path of righteousness which is in our hearts and souls.”
A woman in the audience said, “Amen.”
