Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“Four hundred and ninety-seven thousand,” Adair corrected her, “not to mention the five hundred thousand in my closet that they didn’t find.”

“Let’s stick to the Fuller case,” she said. “If it wasn’t a bribe, what did they call it?”

“A double murder,” Adair said. “And also a very expensive and elaborate scheme to make it look like a bribe.”

“This is official-and not just your theory?” Huckins said.

“It’s what was decided after an extensive investigation by city and state police. Actually the state police were the attorney general’s investigators who were brought in because, after all, old Mark was a state supreme court justice.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Huckins said.

Adair’s blue eyes were kitten-innocent as he looked at Kelly Vines and asked, “Didn’t we go over all this during lunch at the roadhouse?”

“No,” Vines said.

“Why not, Mr. Vines?” she said.

Vines shrugged. “It’s a matter of public record.”

“The public record in a distant state.”

“Maybe I should’ve said common knowledge.”

“Sounds to me like some folks for some reason don’t trust other folks,” Fork said.

The silence that followed was growing uncomfortable when Jack Adair, using what he regarded as his voice of sweet reason, broke it with: “We’re about to reach an impasse that maybe I can prevent, Mayor, if you’ll indulge me for a minute or so.”

After considering the request, she nodded.

“According to both state and city police,” Adair said, “the killer who rigged the deaths of old Justice Fuller and his wife to look like suicide and murder, respectively, was either careless, stupid or hadn’t watched enough TV. As every nine-year-old now knows, thanks to television, when you fire a semiautomatic pistol it leaves a residue on your hand. There wasn’t any on Justice Fuller’s hand. Therefore, he couldn’t have shot either his wife or himself.” Adair looked at Vines. “The murder weapon, as I recall, was a thirty-two-caliber Llama, right?”

“The XA model,” Vines said.

“The police traced it to a Tampa gun shop,” Adair continued, “where it’d been bought by a Mr. T. S. Jones, whose name, address and driver’s license proved false.”

“What about that letter Fuller wrote-his confession?” Huckins asked.

“The police decided it was dictated to him. They’re convinced the shooter threatened to kill old Mrs. Fuller unless her husband wrote exactly what he was told. After he wrote the dictated confession and signed it, the cops think he was forced to remove his lower plate and use it as a paperweight-a bizarre touch-and shove his chair back from the table. The killer then shot Fuller, went into the living room and shot Mrs. Fuller, who was so far gone she probably didn’t even realize what was happening. The killer then returned to the dining room, wrapped Fuller’s hand around the pistol to leave some prints and let the gun fall to the floor. It was, the cops said, a very amateurish piece of work-except for the false teeth on the suicide note, which they thought was kind of cute, and the three thousand dollars missing from the five hundred thousand that made it look as if Fuller had already spent it. The cops also liked that a lot.”

“What if the cops had found that half million in your closet?” Huckins said.

“If that’d happened, I suspect they wouldn’t have been nearly so diligent in their investigation of the Fullers’ deaths and might well have accepted the written confession at face value. And as for me, well, I’d’ve still been doing time.”

“So you’re saying that no one was bribed,” Huckins said.

“I’m still living off that half million Kelly found in my closet and shipped down to the Bahamas.”

“But that wasn’t a bribe in the legal sense, was it?”

“What would you call it-a gift?”

“I’d call it found money,” Sid Fork said. “But I’m kind of flexible.”

There was another silence, briefer this time, that Huckins ended when she asked Adair, “Where are they now?”

“Jack and Jill?” He looked at Vines. “I’m not sure. New York?”

“London,” Vines said.

“When we were out at Cousin Mary’s today-yesterday now-except for Sid, of course, and you avoided telling me-”

“Neglected, not avoided,” Adair said.

“When you didn’t tell me what you’ve just now told us, I remember your saying that if the two Jimson kids died, their share of the gas revenues or royalties would go to their stepmother. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Adair said. “And if the stepmother died, her share would go to Jack and Jill.”

“Once I’d found out that bribe was a fake,” Sid Fork said, “you could bet the rent I’d’ve had me a talk with that stepmother.”

“Kelly’s the authority on her,” Adair said.

All three looked at Vines, but it was the mayor who said, “This time, Mr. Vines, please don’t leave anything out.”

Vines ignored her and looked to his right at the chief of police. “How hard is it to fake a suicide when a gun’s the death weapon?”

“Damned near impossible what with all the forensic expertise there is nowadays,” Fork said. “Best way to fake a suicide is shove the victim out of a high window around three in the morning and don’t leave a note or anything else behind.”

Vines turned to the mayor. “After the cops told our somewhat dim attorney general that the Fullers’ deaths were probably a double murder, he did nothing until he figured out what would give him the most political mileage. Finally, he decided that having a bribe-proof supreme court was the way to go-even though its chief justice by then was having a little trouble with the IRS.”

“Not so little,” Adair said.

“So the A.G. ordered a full-scale investigation that would, in his words, leave no stone unturned. One of the stones most in need of turning was, of course, the stepmother. So a two-man team of experienced investigators was sent down to question her. Soon after the team came back and made its report, the attorney general called a press conference to announce that the deaths of Justice and Mrs. Mark Fuller weren’t suicide-murder after all, but rather what he called ‘a diabolical double murder’ and that neither Justice Fuller nor Chief Justice Adair had ever been bribed. Two days later, just before the two investigators were to question the stepmother again, her Cadillac ran off the road at an estimated seventy-eight miles per hour and into a cottonwood tree.”

“Killed her, too, I bet,” Fork said.

“Broke her neck. An autopsy showed a point-one-six-percent alcohol in her blood, which made her more than legally drunk. An autopsy of the Cadillac by a team of mechanics hired by the attorney general revealed what he described-at still another press conference-as ‘an inexplicable failure of the car’s steering mechanism.’ When a reporter asked if that meant somebody had messed with the tie rods, he said he couldn’t comment until further tests were made, and went on to announce that the stepmother, over the past five months, had withdrawn almost two million dollars in cash from her several bank accounts. After that, everybody thought they knew where the money in the shoeboxes came from and the tie rods were almost forgotten.”

“Pretty good motive,” Sid Fork said. “She puts up two million to win how much-fifteen million, twenty?”

“If both the Jimson kids died, she’d get all the gas royalties,” Vines said. “The last I heard they were valued at anywhere between fifty and a hundred million dollars.”

“If she could’ve made it look like those two kids had successfully bribed the supreme court to keep them out of the gas chamber-”