SCHEMER
H
e sat on the edge of the motel tub, burning the last of the Henderson snapshots.
The cracked, leather-bound album lay spread open on his lap. The door was closed, the rattling fan switched on to clear away the smoke and keep it from setting off the smoke alarm. There were only a handful of snaps left in the album. He’d burned the rest over the past several days, a few each day.
He removed one of the last from its plastic sleeve, looked at it for a time. Lousy, like all of them. Poor composition, bad use of light and background. Cheap camera, probably. Amateur shit. He turned it over to read what was written on the back—“Hayden and George, Aug 1998”—and then spun the wheel of his lighter and touched the flame to one corner. It burned slow at first, then fast. When the heat began to sear his fingers, he dropped the charred remains into the toilet with the others.
Unexpected find, this album. He hadn’t been looking for anything like it, anything at all the afternoon he’d slipped into Damon Henderson’s garage. Bold move, going in there in broad daylight. Proof that he could breach their lives any time and any place he wanted to, that he owned them now whether they knew it yet or not. No real risk involved. Getting into the garage had been ridiculously easy. Wear a khaki shirt, carry a flashlight and a clipboard, wear a badge that looks authentic, act like you belong in the neighborhood, and people take you for a meter reader or a workman and pay no real attention to you.
Sifting through all those boxes and then finding the trunk with the albums in it—that had been almost as much of a rush as Sunday night’s visit. Bad few seconds when Henderson came blundering in, spoiling the planned acid bath for his CPA records and his car, but the rest of it had turned out real well. Hitting him with the tire iron, straddling him, whispering to him, hitting him again and hearing him scream … oh, yeah! He’d had to fight himself not to use the tire iron a third time, split Henderson’s skull wide open, but it wasn’t the right place or the right time. Henderson wouldn’t have suffered enough. And there hadn’t been enough time to tell him why he was suffering. That would come later.
He looked at and burned two more photos, taking his time. The last one was in color, a posed shot, poorly centered and badly filtered so that the background was muzzy and the images not sharp. But they were clear enough for identification, even without what was written on the
back: “Cliff, Damon, and Dad, Oct 2000.” He lifted the snapshot close to his mouth and spat on each of the images before he set it on fire. Held it longer than any of the others, watching it burn, savoring the blackened destruction of the images until the flame reached his fingers and made him let go. Some of the ashes missed the toilet bowl. He scraped them into his hand, brushed them in.
Then he stood, unzipped his fly, urinated onto the ashes.
Spat one last time on the yellow-black mess and flushed it away.
At the sink he washed his hands. They still felt unclean when he was done, so he washed them again. Better. He used the towel, making sure his palms and wrists were completely dry. Then he switched off the fan and went out into the main room.
Typical cheap motel room, designed for anonymity. The perfect hideout. He smiled at the thought of “hideout” and sat down on the lumpy bed.
The spiral-bound notebook was in his briefcase, along with the five-by-seven color portrait and the digital snapshots he’d taken at the cemetery. He unlocked the case, took them out, lay back with his head propped against the headboard. He looked at the portrait first, looked at it for a long time. Familiar face, but clouded by time—a kid’s memory. But he’d gotten to know it well from the portrait, as well as he ever would. Each time he looked at it he felt a great tenderness well up inside. She’d been so pretty. Not the plastic, Hollywood kind of prettiness—genuine, the girl-next-door kind. High cheekbones, small nose, small cleft in the well-shaped chin. And not just attractive
outside, but good inside. You could see the goodness shining in those soft brown eyes.
After a time he put the portrait down and again read the last few notebook pages, shaping each sentence with his lips, lingering over the important passages. Sad, bitter, painful. Full of love and sorrow and desperation. Full of pleading—a tacit plea to him, now, because there was nobody else.
Testimony.
Damning testimony.
Wet filled his eyes. He used a clean edge of the pillowcase to dry them, then returned the notebook and the portrait to his briefcase. The rage was in him again, strong and driving. It made the blood beat loud in his temples.
Another face popped out of his memory—thin, wrinkled, not pretty at all. “Damn you,” he said aloud, “why didn’t you read what she wrote? Didn’t you suspect, didn’t you care? And why didn’t you give me the notebook while that son of a bitch was still alive?
He’d
have been the one to suffer then. I’d have made him suffer!”
He lay still for a time until his pulse rate slowed and the rage started to fade. No use blaming her. She’d only done what she believed was right for him. But she shouldn’t have waited, shouldn’t have let him find out the way he had, so long afterward, when it was too late.
He picked up the cemetery photos, shuffled through them. Not too bad. Decent composition considering the darkness and the digital camera. The urn, the ashes, the monument … all clearly defined. The vapors from the acid
made a neat wavy pattern on the one of the headstone. Mementos he could enjoy for years to come.
The anger was gone now, but his eyes had begun to sting. The pillowcase hadn’t been properly laundered after all. His face, his hands … itchy, dirty. He hurried into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and stood under a scalding hot shower to make himself clean again.
JAKE RUNYON
T
he Henderson Construction Company was building three new homes in a hillside cul-de-sac on Los Alegres’ southwestern edge. Two homes framed out and in different stages of completion, the third staked and ready for the concrete foundation to be poured. All three sites were fenced—new Cyclone fencing, from the look of it, probably put up after the vandalism. The gates were open now, half a dozen pickups parked inside, a forklift unloading board lumber from a flatbed truck on one site, a dozen or so workmen making the usual amount of noise.
Runyon left his Ford outside on the street and hunted up Cliff Henderson at the the home nearest completion. They went over by a large, portable tool-storage shed to talk. Even before Henderson pointed it out, Runyon had noticed the acid damage done to the unit’s metal siding.
“Bastard couldn’t get inside the shed,” Henderson said. “Didn’t have enough time to burn the locks off, so he just
splashed acid on the sides. If he had gotten in … thousands of dollars’ worth of tools down the toilet.”
“No attempt at a second pass?”
“If he was thinking about it, the fencing, police patrols, a private security patrol I hired changed his mind. I can’t afford to take any more losses on these sites.”
“How’s your brother?”
“Better. Might let him go home today, tomorrow for sure.”
“You have a chance to talk to him about the missing photo album?”
“On the phone last night. He can’t figure it either. Why the guy would risk poking around in Damon’s garage during the day, why he took the album. Just gets crazier and crazier.”
“Mostly photos of the two of you and your father, you said.”
“Yeah. On the fishing and hunting trips we used to take.”
“Any particular place?”
“Same place every time. Hunting camp in Mendocino County, east of Fort Bragg. Dad built it back in the fifties.”
“Still own the property?”
“Sure. Damon and I don’t get up there as much as we used to, but two of Dad’s old hunting buddies still go now and then. They don’t hunt anymore, they’re both in their seventies, but they fish and play cribbage … you know, just to get away for a few days.”
“Hayden Brock one of them?”
“That’s right. And Dr. George … George Thanopolous.”
Runyon asked, “Anything unusual happen on any of the trips?”
“Like what?”
“Anything at all. Anything that might have been in those snapshots.”
“Not on the trips Damon and me were on. We caught fish, shot a buck if we were lucky, played cards, drank beer, told stories, goofed around. Guy stuff, that’s all.”
“How about on the ones your father took with his buddies?”
“Not that I know about.” Henderson frowned. “What’re you getting at? This stalking crap couldn’t have any connection to my dad or the camp.”
“Then why was the album stolen?”
“Christ, I don’t know. But Dad … he was salt of the earth. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you. He’s been gone five years. And the last time he was up at the camp was three or four years before that, before he got sick. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
R
unyon spent the rest of the morning making the rounds of friends, neighbors, and business acquaintances of the Henderson brothers. None of them had anything to tell him. The Hendersons were great guys, good family men, regular churchgoers. Honest as the day is long. No harm in either of them. Incredible that anybody could hate them enough to do what had been done to them.
By the time he finished, he was convinced that the motive for the harrassment and assault lay elsewhere. Something to do with the father?
Wrong tree or not, it was worth some more barking.
H
ayden Brock leaned back in the swivel chair in his law office, hooked his thumbs under the straps of his old-fashioned galluses, and gave Runyon an unreadable lawyer stare. His eyes were a cold blue under bushy white eyebrows. White hair, fine as rabbit fur, and a thick white mustache gave him a stern and frosty look.
“If you’re looking for dirt on Lloyd Henderson,” he said flatly, “you won’t find it here.”
Runyon said, “The only thing I’m looking for is answers to why his sons are being stalked.”
“Terrible thing, that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Lloyd.”
“Everybody keeps telling me that.”
“But you don’t seem to listen.”
“When you can’t find an answer in one place, you look in another. Right now I’m looking at Lloyd Henderson.”
“Just because the first act of vandalism was the desecration of his grave?”
“That’s one reason. Another is the stolen photo album. Can you offer any explanation for that?”
“No.”
“Do you know of anything unusual that happened on the family’s hunting and fishing trips to Mendocino County?”
“I do not.”
“On any of the trips that didn’t include the two sons?”
“No. Weekend getaways, that’s all they were.”
“Men only? No women allowed?”
The white mustache bristled. “What kind of question is that?”
“A simple one.”
“Our wives didn’t share our passion for the outdoors.”
Lawyerspeak. Factual but evasive. Runyon said, “So there were no women in the photos that were stolen.”
“I just told you our wives never went along, didn’t I?”
Same evasive response. “What about after Lloyd’s divorce?”
“Now what are you asking?”
“He didn’t remarry. I assume he had women friends over the last twenty years of his life. Did he ever take one of them to the hunting camp?”
“No.”
“Was he involved with any particular woman after his divorce?”
“If he was, it’s none of your business.”
“You won’t give me a name?”
“I will not. Why should I?”
“The more people I can talk to …”
“People who know Cliff and Damon, yes. Not those who knew Lloyd.” Brock leaned forward so abruptly his chair back made a sharp cracking noise. “I suggest you concentrate on finding the link between the two sons and the maniac responsible for harassing them. You won’t find it with their father.”
“If you say so, Mr. Brock.”
“I do say so. Now suppose you get on with your business so I can proceed with mine.”
End of interview. Runyon stood up.
“Just remember what I said about looking for dirt,” Brock said. “It won’t get you anywhere you need to go.”
Second time Brock had used the phrase “looking for dirt.” Protesting too much. If there was no dirt to dig up, why keep mentioning it?
G
eorge Thanopolous lived in a large ranch-style home on three or four acres atop one of the west-side hills. The elderly woman who answered the door identified herself as Mrs. Thanopolous, and when Runyon told her who he was and why he was there, she said, “It’s awful, isn’t it? Just awful. Those poor boys. But there isn’t anything George or I can tell you. If we knew anything that might help, we would have told the police.”
“I’m sure you would have. But I’d still like to talk to your husband. Is he home?”
“Out back with his bees.”
“Bees?”
“His hobby, you know. Beekeeping and making honey. Just go on around the side of the house and across the terrace. You’ll see the apiary and bee house from there.”
Runyon followed her instructions. The terrace was broad and flagstoned, with a sweeping view of the town spread out below, part of the valley and the bordering hills to the east. Beyond the terrace was a wide grassy field sprinkled here and there with low white boxes that must be the beehives. Nobody was working among them except bees.
A flagstone path led through the field above the hives, to a shedlike building painted the same bright white. The door was open, and as Runyon approached he heard a hammer banging away inside and then spotted the man using it. He stopped outside and called, “Dr. Thanopolous?”
George Thanopolous was well up in his seventies, his face mostly free of wrinkles—small, energetic, brighteyed. He didn’t seem to mind having a stranger turn up unexpectedly at his bee house. Particularly a stranger with Runyon’s credentials and purpose.
The drop-lit interior was cramped and crowded. Workbench, shelves, Peg-Boards of tools and beekeeping equipment—bee veils, smokers, elbow-length gloves, strips of lathe, glue pots, brushes, a bunch of other items Runyon didn’t recognize. The place had a faint odor, partly sweet like melons and partly sour like decaying flesh. Bee venom? Probably. It sure wasn’t clover honey.
Thanopolous indicated the wood strips that he’d been nailing together into a frame. “Don’t mind if I finish making this comb while we talk? Good. Want to get a few more done today. Stool over there if you care to sit down, just move the bee escapes to the bench here.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Thanopolous drove another nail with his tack hammer. “Don’t know what I can tell you,” he said. “Cliff and Damon are both good boys, but Ellen and I don’t see much of them anymore. Why anybody’d want to stalk them … don’t have a clue.”
“Both family men. Faithful husbands, honest in their business practices.”
“Absolutely. Their father was strict with them, growing up. Single parent, you know.”
“Yes. There doesn’t seem to be anything in their lives that triggered the attacks. I’m looking into the possibility that the motive may have something to do with Lloyd Henderson.”
“Lloyd? Oh, now, that’s not possible. He passed away some years ago.”
“I know. But the first act was the desecration of his grave.”
“True. That struck me, too. Just so damn senseless.”
“You and Lloyd Henderson were close friends?”
“That’s right. Thirty years … no, thirty-five.”
“Went hunting and fishing together regularly.”
“Up to his camp in the mountains. With his boys and my son sometimes.” A pain shadow crossed Thanopolous’s face, made him pause in his work. “David’s gone now, too. Desert Storm.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Wars like that, like the Iraq mess … stupid. Young men are the ones who pay the price.”
“And their families.”
“Yes. Well,” Thanopolous said, and shook himself, and resumed his hammering. “You were asking me about Lloyd.”
“He have any enemies that you know about?”
“Not Lloyd. No, sir. Everybody liked him. Especially the women.”
“Ladies’ man, was he?”
“Lord, yes. Had more than his fair share.” Thanopolous chuckled—a dry sound, almost a cackle. “One thing he used to say. He was a dentist, you know, and he’d say, ‘I fill cavities all day, and when I’m lucky I get to fill one at night.’ My wife doesn’t think that’s funny, but it always made me laugh.”
“Did he always have a roving eye?”
“You asking if he was a faithful husband? That’s not for me to talk about. Nobody’s business, now, anyway.”
“Was he involved with any particular woman after his divorce?”
“Not that lasted more than a few months.”
“So he never came close to marrying again?”
“Wanted nothing more to do with marriage. Divorce soured him on it.”
“His lady friends. I’d appreciate a name or two.”
“Can’t oblige you. Sleeping dogs.” The dry chuckle again. “Not that they were, any of ’em. Dogs. No, sir, he had good taste, Lloyd did.”
Runyon asked, “Did he brag about his conquests?”
“Some, but he wouldn’t give names or details. Gentleman about that.”
“Brag to his sons, too?”
“No, never to the boys. Strict with them, as I told you. Kept his private life and his kids’ lives separate.”
“He ever bring a woman along on one of the hunting trips?”
“No, sir. Men only. Only time a woman ever showed up at the cabin, he chased her off quick.”
“When did that happen?”
“Oh, a long time ago.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“My memory’s not so good anymore. Why?”
“I’d like to know who she was.”
“Woman from Harmony, nearest place to the camp where you could buy supplies. Worked at the general store there, if I remember right.”
“Can you recall her name?”
“No. Don’t think I ever knew it.”
“Why did she show up at the cabin?”
“Well, I’m not too sure about that,” Thanopolous said.