Stuart Woods - Under the Lake

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

was its title. Howell flipped quickly through it, passing up small bequests to the butler, cook, and gardener. There were some small charitable bequests, not many. When he got to the bequest of the residue of Sutherland’s estate, he was brought up short. He reread the first paragraph twice, to be sure he absolutely understood its meaning, then he pressed on for two more pages, reading as fast as he could and still retain what they said. The will was witnessed by Enda McCauliffe and two other people whose names he did not recognize. But it was what came after the will that riveted him to the spot. He read on. He was totally rapt now; a platoon of police storming into the room would not have disturbed him.

He finished and looked about him. Eric Sutherland had a copying machine, but it wasn’t here. Where had he seen it? Of course, in the office building out back. He looked at his watch. He had been in the house for a good eight minutes, maybe longer. He tried to think how long it might take him to get out there, jimmy the door, wait for the machine to warm up, and copy the will. Five or six minutes, and he couldn’t afford to make a mess of the door. There had been no keys in Sutherland’s desk. Since the body was wearing pajamas, they were probably upstairs in his bedroom with the normal contents of the man’s pockets.

No. Too much time, too much risk. He couldn’t afford to end up in jail, not today. He put the will back into the envelope, got the string wound around the closure and replaced it in the safe. He closed it, worked the handle and spun the lock.

He pulled the socks off his hands, then picked up the phone and dialed the sheriffs office. Scotty answered.

“Is Bo there?”

“Yes,” she said in a hushed voice. “Why? What’s up?”

“Let me speak to him.”

“Why? What’s going on, John?”

“Let me speak to him right now, Scotty.” He heard her call out to Bo.

“Hey, John, how’s it going?”

Howell glanced at his watch. “I make it four minutes to eleven, Bo. What time have you got?”

“Four and a half to. You want to compare watches? I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

“Please make a note of the time, Bo. I’m at Eric Sutherland’s house. Sutherland’s dead. Looks like suicide. You want to get out here very fast, please?”

There was a strange noise behind Howell. He spun around to find Alfred, the butler standing there in his hat and coat, holding a small suitcase. Alfred was staring at Eric Sutherland’s body. He made the noise again, then crumpled and fell sideways, bounced off a chair, and landed heavily on the floor.

“John? What’s going on?”

“Hang on.” Howell bent over the butler and peeled back an eyelid; the pupil contracted immediately. He felt for a pulse; strong and rapid. He took a pillow off a chair and placed it under the man’s feet, then picked up the phone again.

“Looks like Alfred just got home from somewhere. He’s fainted, but I think he’s okay.”

“You wait there with Alfred and don’t touch anything, you hear me?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Howell sat down on a chair and put on his socks and shoes. He hoped to God Alfred hadn’t noticed he was barefoot.

Howell heard the siren from the moment Bo left the sheriffs office. After a minute, the butler began to stir and wanted to get up. Howell helped him to his feet and walked him to a living room sofa as the siren grew louder and louder. He had just settled Alfred there when Bo strode through the open front door.

“Where?” he asked.

Howell pointed to the study and followed the sheriff in.

“Jesus Christ,” Bo said.

“Yeah.”

Bo stood and looked at the corpse for a long moment. “Well,” he said, finally, “we had our differences, I guess, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted him to end up that way.”

Howell wondered how Bo would have liked for Sutherland to end up. “You see the pencil,” he said. “I reckon he took off his slippers, there, put the pencil through the trigger guard, holding it in his toes, and pushed it against the trigger with both feet.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Bo said, still rooted to the spot. “He couldn’t have put the barrel in his mouth and still reached the trigger with his hand.” He was quiet again for another moment, then he took a breath and shook himself. He picked up the phone and dialed. “Scotty, give me Mike. Mike? Get on the horn and get everybody over to Sutherland’s house. Yeah, he’s dead. I don’t know, yet, just hold your horses and listen. Call Dr. Murphy and ask him to get out here right away. Call Herman McWilliam and tell him to get over here with his wagon; we’re going to have to take the body over to Gainesville for a proper post mortem. Then you round up the fingerprint kit, a lot of evidence bags and the camera – the Polaroid and the 35 millimeter – everything we could possibly need to work a scene, and get over here. Tell Scotty and Sally to handle the radio and the office, and not to leave until they hear from me. I don’t think anybody knows about this, yet, so tell them to keep things as normal as possible, okay? Tell the guys to park around back, then stand at each entrance to the drive. Nobody gets in unless I invited them. I’ll want you inside with me. Got that? Any questions? Okay, move it.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Howell. “All right, John, what were you doing here?”

Howell had thought about that one. “I dropped by to ask Mr. Sutherland some questions about local history.”

“Why didn’t you go to the library?”

“They were questions I thought only Mr. Sutherland could answer. Or would.”

Bo glared at him. “You’re still after that, are you?”

Howell looked him in the eye. “You bet.”

Bo shrugged. “All right, give me this morning from the top.”

Howell ran through his morning for the sheriff, seeing Scotty off to work, running out of gas, Benny Pope’s visit, stopping at the post office, and his arrival at the house. He stretched the time a little to cover his search of the study. Bo made copious notes as he talked.

“What did you touch?”

“The phone, the cushions to make Alfred comfortable… that’s it, I think.”

“Not the doorknobs?”

“Let’s see; the front door was ajar, I touched the door, but not the knob. I touched the back doorknobs, inside and out, when I went out there. The study door was open, one side of the shotgun case was open; I remember I saw my reflection in just the one door.”

The sheriff looked at him sharply. “John, I know you well enough to know that you didn’t just stand here when you found the body. Did you touch the desk or the safe or the filing cabinets or anything else at all?”

Howell felt tiny sweat beads breaking on his forehead. He hoped Bo didn’t notice. “I stood here in my tracks and looked at the room real hard for about… I guess, a minute. My first thought was that there might be a note.”

“Was there a note? Did you find anything like that?”

“No. The room is exactly the way I found it.” It was, too. Everything in its place.

“John, listen to me. Nobody else is here yet. I haven’t even read you your rights. If there’s anything else you want to tell me, anything you might just have forgotten or overlooked, anything you might have done, now’s the time to tell me, unofficially, if you want. In a minute this place is going to be swarming with people, and it’ll be too late for me to help you.”

Howell blinked. “Help me? I don’t need any help. Jesus, Bo, you don’t think for a moment this is anything but a suicide, do you? Come on, you’re not going to play me like a suspect.“