Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“I can’t possibly tell you. It wouldn’t be ethical without the patient’s permission.” Converse paused, and his eyebrows went up. “Did you put Dr. Jeffrey up to calling me last night?”

“Not exactly. I asked him the same question I’m asking you.”

“Well, I’m not answering either of you,” Converse said flatly. “The girl’s in enough trouble as it is.”

“I’m trying to get her out of trouble.”

“You’re going about it rather strangely, aren’t you?”

I threw him a question from left field. “Was she taking drugs last summer, something like that?”

“I refuse to answer.” But his clever eyes flickered in a way that said yes.

“Psychedelic drugs?”

His curiosity overcame his ethics, or whatever they were. “What makes you suggest that?”

“I heard she was suicidal. A bad trip on LSD sometimes has that effect. I’m sure you know that, doctor.”

“Of course.”

“Will you sit down and talk about it with me?”

“No sir, I will not. I have no right to discuss my patient’s private affairs.”

“Sandy’s affairs are pretty public now. And I’m on her side, remember.”

Converse shook his head. “You really must excuse me. I have hospital rounds to make.”

“How’s Lupe?”

“He’s doing fine now.”

“Is Lupe on drugs by any chance?”

“How on earth should I know?”

Converse turned abruptly and went away.

Captain Aubrey was waiting for me in the living room. Thorndike had filled him in on my report, but he had some further questions.

“You’ve been close to this case from the beginning,” he said. “How do you think it all started?”

“It started the day that Davy Spanner and Sandy Sebastian got together. They’re both badly alienated, young people with a grudge.”

“I know something about Spanner. He’s a psycho with a record. He shouldn’t have been out on the streets.” His eyes were a cold gray. “Fortunately he won’t be out much longer. I’ve been in touch with Rodeo City. They found the Sebastian girl’s car north of the ranch, hub-deep in the mud. Spanner won’t get far without it. The Santa Teresa County authorities expect to take him today.”

“Then what?”

“Spanner’s their baby.” Aubrey’s phrase hit me queerly, and broke into multiple meanings. “They want him for first-degree murder, and that takes care of him. The problem of the girl is more complicated. For one thing, she’s a juvenile, with a clean record. Also she ran out on Spanner before the Fleischer murder was committed. Lucky for her.”

“Sandy’s no criminal. She wanted to quit as soon as she saw crime was for real.”

“You’ve talked to her, haven’t you? What gets into a girl like that?” Aubrey was genuinely disturbed. “I’ve got a daughter sixteen. She’s a good girl. So was this one apparently. How do I know my own daughter won’t walk up to somebody some fine day and crack his skull with a tire iron?”

“I think Sandy had a grudge against Lupe. The case may have started right there.”

“What did she have against him?”

“I better not say until I can prove it, Captain.”

He leaned toward me, red in the face, remembering his own daughter. “Did he have sexual congress with her?”

“Not that I know of. Whatever happened between them will all come out in the wash. The probation people will be going over her with a fine-tooth comb.”

Aubrey gave me an impatient look, and turned to leave.

I detained him. “There’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Let’s go out to your car. It’s more private.”

He shrugged. We went outside. Aubrey got in behind the wheel of his unmarked car, and I slid in beside him.

“Are you the same Aubrey who used to work out of the Malibu station?”

“I am. It’s why I was assigned to this one.”

“This is the second major crime in the Hackett family, I’ve been told.”

“That’s right. The senior Mr. Hackett – his name was Mark – was shot on the beach.”

“Did you ever get a line on the killer?”

“No. These hit-and-run crimes are hard to solve.” Aubrey sounded apologetic. “The trouble is there’s generally no provable connection between the robber and his victim.”

“Was robbery the motive?”

“Apparently. Hackett’s wallet was taken, and he carried a lot of money. Which wasn’t the wisest thing to do under the circumstances. He had a hideaway cottage on the beach, and he made a habit of walking down there at night, all by himself. Some thief with a gun caught onto the habit, and took him for his roll.”

“Did you arrest anyone?”

“We picked up dozens of suspects. But we couldn’t pin the crime on any one of them.”

“Do you remember any of their names?”

“Not at this late date.”

“I’ll try one on you, anyway. Jasper Blevins.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it rings no bell. Who is Jasper Blevins?”

“Davy Spanner’s father. According to an old Santa Teresa newspaper, he died under a train near Rodeo City, about three days after Mark Hackett was murdered.”

“So?”

“It’s an interesting coincidence.”

“Maybe. I run into these coincidences all the time. Sometimes they mean something, other times they don’t.”

“This one does.”

“Do you mean there’s a causal connection between these two crimes – Mark Hackett’s murder and his son’s kidnapping?”

“Some kind of a connection, anyway. According to a newspaper account, you recovered the revolver Mark Hackett was shot with.”

Aubrey turned and looked at me appraisingly. “You do your homework, don’t you?”

“Did you ever trace the revolver to its owner?”

Aubrey was slow in answering. “The queer thing is,” he said finally, “the gun belonged to Hackett himself, in a sense–”

“That suggests a family affair.”

Aubrey lifted the flat of his hand above the wheel. “Let me finish. The gun belonged to Hackett in the sense that one of his oil companies had purchased it. They stored it in an unlocked drawer in their Long Beach office. It wasn’t kept proper track of, and it simply disappeared, apparently some time before the murder.”

“Disgruntled employee?”

“We went into that pretty thoroughly. But we didn’t come up with anything tangible. The trouble was, Hackett had quite a number of disgruntled employees. He’d recently moved here from Texas, and he was riding herd on them Texas style. He was very unpopular with his people. But we couldn’t prove that any one of them killed him. He had nearly five hundred employees in Long Beach alone, and a good half of them hated his guts.”

“What was the name of his company?”

“Corpus Christi Oil and Gas. Mark Hackett originally came from Corpus Christi. He should have stayed there.”

Aubrey punched my arm in a friendly way, and turned his ignition key. I wandered into the house.

GERDA HACKETT was in the picture gallery, standing absorbed in front of a painting. It showed a man in a geometrical maze, and seemed to show that the man and the maze were continuous with each other.

“Are you interested in painting, Mrs. Hackett?”

“Yes. Particularly in Klee. I sold this picture to Mr. Hack – to Stephen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I worked in a gallery in München, a very good gallery.” Her voice was thick with nostalgia. “It was how I met my husband. But if I had a second chance I would stay in Germany.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it here. Such dreadful things happen to people.”

“At least you got your husband back.”

“Yes.” But this failed to cheer her. She turned to me with a vague ambiguous light in her blue eyes. “I’m very grateful, really. You saved his life and I want to thank you. Vielen Dank.”