William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

“What’s that I hear?” Shawn said to the sky. “There’s something talking to me. It’s a ghost. No, a sprite. No, wait, it’s a spirit.”

“If it isn’t carrying a map,” Mathis said, “tell it our smallest billing increment is ten minutes, so unless it wants to be on the hook for a sixth of our combined hourly charges, it should go away.”

“No, wait,” Shawn said. “Not one spirit. Spirits. Glasses of spirits. Quarts of spirits. Gallons of spirits. They’re calling to one of us here. Join us, join our party. No one has to know.”

Shawn opened his eyes and leveled his gaze directly at Balowsky. “I think that message was for you. You wouldn’t happen to be in the habit of cavorting with spirits, would you? Because they really want to meet up with you as soon as possible, and they say that will happen much faster if you all stop arguing for one minute and let me do this.”

Gwendolyn let out a snort of derision. Shawn looked over the group of lawyers. Balowsky was staring at the ground, his hands twitching more than before. Savage was gazing eastward, as if still figuring out their route. Mathis fumbled in his pack, pulled out a bandanna, and wiped the sweat that was still trickling down from his hairline. Gwendolyn was the only one who was looking back at Shawn. She met his gaze with an intensity Gus had seen only once, at the reptile cage at Santa Barbara’s zoo.

And then there was Jade. Rushton had provided her with hiking clothes and boots in her trademark color, and it occurred to Gus that once they were in the woods, it would be extremely difficult to see her. But right now she stuck out like a bowl of lime Jell-O at a rock convention. She fidgeted nervously, her hands sliding in and out of the pockets of her dress, glancing furtively between ground and sky, and doing everything to proclaim her innocence short of whistling a jaunty tune.

“I’m seeing a trail,” Shawn said. “It’s long and it’s hard. It’s mysterious and confusing. But most of all, it’s green.”

The other lawyers turned as one to face Jade. She took a step back. “Why are you looking at me?” she said. “I don’t have the map.”

“Sure, you don’t,” Gwendolyn said. “Now, are you going to hand it over, or do we toss you over the side of the mountain and just follow the way you fall?”

“I can’t,” Jade said. “Even if I had the map, and you will all notice I’m not saying that I do, I couldn’t possibly show it to you without our all being fired. We’ve got to work together to figure out the right way to get off this mountain.”

“I agree with her,” Savage said. “We don’t need a map, anyway. We just need to work together to reach a consensus. And I vote that we all go whichever way Jade says. Who else?”

There was a moment of hesitation; then Mathis raised his hand. Balowsky nodded.

“Fine, we’ll follow the green freak,” Gwendolyn said. “But if she doesn’t have the map, or if she does but she’s so stupid she gets us lost anyway, I guarantee I will not be the first to die out here.”

“Isn’t it nice when we can all work together like this?” Shawn said. “Mr. Rushton would be so proud.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Mathis said. “Which way?”

Jade looked around nervously. She glanced up at the sun, then down at the various trails that led away from them.

“Not that I have the map or anything like that,” she said.

Gwendolyn groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

“But if I had to follow my own instincts, I’d say that we should take the trail that goes to the northwest,” Jade said.

She gave them all a big smile and set off down the path to her right. After a few paces she looked back to see that everyone was still standing in place. “I thought we were all following my instincts.”

“Your ‘instincts,’ yes,” said Savage. “Your sense of direction not so much. Northwest is that way.”

He pointed at a trail that ran off to their left. Gus was mildly disappointed to see that when Jade blushed, her face actually turned red, not another shade of green.

“And isn’t this the very definition of ‘teamwork’?” Shawn said. “One of knows the directions, and another one of us knows what they mean.”

The lawyers all glowered at Shawn as they trudged past him towards the northwest trail. Gus let them all start down the trail before he whispered to Shawn.

“If Mathis really is the killer-”

“He is,” Shawn said.

“Fine, then he needs Jade alive until he can get the map away from her,” Gus said. “And unless he’s really good at hiding his wilderness skills, he needs Savage alive to interpret her directions. But does he have any reason why he shouldn’t try to kill us before we expose him?”

“Only our charm and good looks,” Shawn said. He hoisted his pack and started down the trail.

Of course Chris Rasmussen had wanted to run to the Pasadena Police and give a full report. But Henry’d had no desire to spend the next few hours waiting in a holding cell until the locals had determined that the bloated body on the floor had been dead for several days and that Henry and Rasmussen were unlikely to have committed the crime, so he passed on that plan. He did agree to call in an anonymous tip from a pay phone. Then he called Lassiter from his cell and filled him in on what they’d discovered. They agreed to meet at Ellen Svaco’s house as soon as Henry and Rasmussen could make it back.

“That’s my jurisdiction,” Rasmussen pouted.

“It’s your interagency task force,” Henry said. “More important, it’s a murder that happened to one of your citizens on your turf. If you let any ridiculous, petty concern like jurisdiction stand in the way of making that right, then you obviously didn’t understand a single word I said when you were in junior high.”

Henry slammed his foot on the gas and hoped the look of determination on his face would serve the same function as the cherry he didn’t have to put on his hood. It did-or maybe they simply didn’t cruise past any cops. Either way, they made it back to Isla Vista in less than two hours. Rasmussen sulked the entire way.

When Henry pulled up outside Ellen Svaco’s house, two squad cars and a plainclothes vehicle were already parked at the curb. The crime scene seal had been cut, and uniformed officers were going in and out of the house.

Lassiter met Henry and Rasmussen at the front door.

“What have you found?” Henry said.

“Nothing directly connecting her to her cousin,” Lassiter said. “Except all that Fluffy crap, of course.”

“Fluffy’s the key,” Henry said. “I’ve been thinking it over on the drive back up. I think Ellen and her cousin were partners in some illegal enterprise. Arnold kept his half of the money, but she had him donate hers.”

“An illegal enterprise in peaceful Isla Vista?” Lassiter said. “If only the local constabulary had noticed. Ellen Svaco might still be alive.”

Rasmussen stared down at the ground and didn’t say anything.

“It’s the only way I can put it together,” Henry said. “Still one thing that doesn’t work for me, though. Officer Rasmussen spoke to all the neighbors. You’d think if she had been that emotional about losing a pet, even more than five years ago, someone would have mentioned it. It’s the kind of thing that defines a person.”

Rasmussen was still staring at the ground, but they could see his mouth moving. Although Henry couldn’t read lips, he was pretty sure the word “jurisdiction” was muttered more than once.

“What’s that you’re saying?” Lassiter said.

“It’s a transitory population,” Rasmussen mumbled. “College town. People don’t stay here long.”