Bill Pronzini - Boobytrap

The first thing I did when we cleared the immediate area was to try calling Tamara on the car phone. No good; I couldn’t get through a wall of static. I’d had trouble with the mobile unit before in mountainous terrain, particularly bad-weather or windy days, and during the past hour or so a high, sharp wind had begun to blow up here. Kerry kept telling me to get the thing replaced with a more sophisticated cell phone and I kept putting it off like the bullheaded procrastinator she said I was. Damn car was going in for a new unit first of next week.

I drove too fast along the rough road, Marian sitting rigidly beside me, staring straight ahead and not making a sound even when a bump or pothole bounced us around like clay figures in a box. She didn’t want conversation right now and that was fine with me. There was plenty of time — between five and six long hours — for what talking we had left to do.

We cleared the last sheriffs roadblock at the Bucks Lake Road intersection, began to wind down to lower elevations. I tried the phone again as we neared Quincy. Still staticky, but I could make out circuit rings through the crackle, which meant Tamara and I could hear each other. I stayed on until she answered, and it was all right as long as both of us spoke loudly and distinctly.

“Been hoping you’d call,” she said. “Bombs, kidnapping — man, shit does happen when you’re around.”

“Yeah. How’d you hear about it?”

“Joe DeFalco. Called a while ago, said soon as he got word what was going down up there he knew you were involved.”

“What’d you tell him?”

Mutter, mutter wrapped in static.

“Say that again. Louder.”

“Told him everything I know — nothing much. Where’re you?”

I told her that and who was with me and where we were going; the rest could wait until later. “What I need,” I said then, “is for you to keep on top of the situation with Latimer. I don’t mean media reports, I mean an official pipeline — I want to know immediately if and when anything breaks over the next five hours. Can do?”

Static. Then, “…be no problem. Felicia owes me one.”

Felicia was Felicia Jackson, a friend of Tamara’s who worked in the SFPD’s communications department. Tamara never ceased to amaze me, not only with her computer skills but in other ways; in a few short months she’d made personal contacts in strategic places that it would’ve taken me years to establish.

“Any news,” I said, “even if it’s unconfirmed.”

“You got it.”

Into Quincy, out of it again rolling southeast on Highway 70. Traffic was fairly light; I let the speedometer needle ease up over seventy and hang there. My instinct was to bear down even harder, but I was afraid to run the risk of accident or attracting the attention of the Highway Patrol. There were quite a few HP patrols in the Sierras during summer months and they weren’t inclined to be forgiving of speeders.

Marian still had nothing to say. I glanced over at her now and then and her position didn’t change; she seemed almost catatonic, lost deep inside herself. The inside of my head was not a good place to be right now; the inside of her head, I thought, must be three times as bleak and haunted.

We were coming up on a wide place in the road called Cromberg when the phone buzzed. I yanked the receiver out of its cradle, almost dropped it in my haste to get the line open.

Cantrell. And a static-free connection. I heard him loud and clear when he said, “You’re out of luck.”

“What does that mean?”

“No rentals in the Half Moon Bay area by Donald Latimer or Jacob Strayhorn.”

“Your office is sure of that?”

“Positive. I even had my girl check back two full months, just in case.”

“How wide an area did she cover?”

“All of San Mateo County.”

“All right. Listen, call her back and have her check Santa Cruz County rentals. And if that’s a dead end… a list of all the rentals by a single male in the Half Moon Bay area over the past six weeks. He could’ve used another name.”

“You don’t want much for your hundred bucks.”

“I thought you weren’t doing this for the money. Or the publicity.”

“…Okay, right. But what good’s a list going to do you? Rental could be in a man’s name only, but he’s taking the place for his family, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. Bound to be a lot of names in any case, this time of year.”

“We can narrow it down. Chances are he wouldn’t have much money to spend, and he’d have to pay in cash. And his references would be shaky at best.”

“Have to be a low-end property,” Cantrell said musingly. “A dog listing that some agent’d be so anxious to unload, he wouldn’t bother to check references. I don’t operate that way, but there’re some in the business who do.”

Oh, sure, you’re not one of them. I said, “Anything that looks promising, have your office person call the agent and find out if the renter’s description matches Latimer’s.”

“Fat chance. He looks like half the white guys on the street these days. Besides, that’s liable to take all afternoon.”

“You planning on going anywhere?”

“No, but I’m tired of sitting around, away from all the action.”

“I feel for you. But not half as much as I feel for the Dixons.”

“Yeah, all right, I hear you. But this is the end of it.”

“One way or the other,” I said.

If he heard that, he didn’t respond to it. Noise had started up in the background, voices chattering words I couldn’t make out. After about fifteen seconds, Cantrell said, “Mack just came in. Looks like the bomb squad’s finally finished and on their way out of here. Bomb didn’t blow up, at least there wasn’t any big boom, but something must’ve happened. Mack said an ambulance just went tearing out that way.”

I let all of that pass. “Call your office. Don’t let us down, Cantrell.”

“Count on me, don’t worry.”

Yeah. The lid was coming off the shotgun slaying of Lieutenant Dewers; once it was all the way off, the excitement level at Deep Mountain Lake would climb again. That and the impending media swarm would lure Cantrell like flame lures bugs. If his “girl” had gotten back to him before then, I’d get another call from him. If not, I’d just had my last conversation with the caring, reliable, and humanitarian Hal Cantrell.

Marian roused herself as I slid the phone receiver back into its cradle. She’d been listening to my end of the exchange, had figured out from that what I had Cantrell doing. She wanted to know how I knew Latimer had been living in the Half Moon Bay area. I told her about Nils Ostergaard’s suspicions, the Safeway receipt I’d found in his truck.

“Latimer killed Nils, didn’t he. It wasn’t an accident.”

“It looks that way. I think he caught Nils snooping around his cottage Sunday night and killed him there and then moved the body later.”

“Poor Nils. My God.” Then she asked, “Do you think it’s possible Latimer took Chuck to Half Moon Bay?”

“Possible, yes.”

“But not likely.”

“As likely as any other possibility right now.”

She didn’t believe it. She fell silent again.

All right, I thought, so it’s a long shot. What else do we have except long shots?

The miles rolled away and we were in Truckee shortly before three o’clock. I stopped on the outskirts for gas and something to put in my stomach. No food since last night and the tension had created a sour, burning pain under my breastbone. While the tank was filling I bought three packaged sandwiches and a couple of sodas in the station’s convenience store. We were back on the road again in ten minutes, heading south on Interstate 80 five minutes after that.