Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“Mr. Archer! I intended to look you up, and here you are. Surely you didn’t follow me from Los Angeles?”

“You seem to have followed me. I imagine we both came here for the same reason. Bruce Campion, alias Burke Damis.”

She nodded gravely. “I heard a report yesterday on the Guadalajara radio. I decided to drop everything and come here. I want to help him even if he did kill his wife. There must be mitigating circumstances.”

Her upward look was steady and pure. I caught myself on the point of envying Campion, wondering how the careless ones got women like her to care for them so deeply. I said: “Your friend is innocent. His wife was murdered by another man.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

Tears started in her eyes. She stood blind and smiling.

“We need to talk, Anne. Let’s go some place we can sit down.”

“But I’m on my way to see him.”

“It can wait. He’ll be busy with the police for some time. They have a lot of questions to ask him, and this is the first day he’s been willing to answer.”

“Why do they have to question him if he’s innocent?”

“He’s a material witness. He also has a good deal of explaining to do.”

“Because he used a false name to cross the border?”

“That doesn’t concern the local police. It’s the business of the Justice Department. I’m hoping they won’t press charges. A man who’s been wrongly indicted for murder has certain arguments on his side – what you called mitigating circumstances.”

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll fight it. Has he done anything else?”

“I can’t think of anything that’s actionable. But there are some things you should know before you see him. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I don’t think I’d better. I haven’t been sleeping too well, and I have to keep my wits about me. Could we have coffee?”

We went upstairs to the restaurant, and over several cups of coffee I told her the whole story of the case. It made more sense in the telling than it had in the acting out. Reflected in her deep eyes, her subtle face, it seemed to be transformed from a raffish melodrama into a tragedy of errors in which Campion and the others had been caught. But I didn’t whitewash him. I thought she deserved to know the worst about him, including his sporadic designs on Harriet’s money and his partial responsibility for her death.

She reached across the table and stopped me with her hand on my sleeve. “I saw Harriet last night.”

I looked at her closely. Her eyes were definite, alive with candor.

“Harriet isn’t dead. Her father must have been lying, or hallucinating. I know I wasn’t.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In the Guadalajara airport, when I went in to make my reservation. It was about nine-thirty last night. She was waiting for her bag at the end of the ticket counter. I heard her call out that it was azul – blue – and I knew her voice. She’d evidently just come in on the Los Angeles plane.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I tried to. She didn’t recognize me, or pretended not to. She turned away very brusquely and ran out to the taxi stands. I didn’t follow her.”

“Why not?”

She answered carefully: “I felt I had no right to interfere with her. I was a little frightened of her, too. She had that terribly bright-faced look. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but I’ve seen that look on other people who were far out.”

I FOUND HER late Monday afternoon in a village in Michoacan. The village had an Aztec name which I forget, and a church with Aztec figures carved in some of its ancient stones. A roughly cobbled road like the bed of a dry creek ran past the church. A beggar woman in widow’s black met me at the door and followed me into the nave reciting griefs I couldn’t understand, though I could see the scars they had left on her. Her face broke up in wrinkled smiles and blessings when I gave her money. She went out and left me alone in the church with Harriet.

She was kneeling on the stone floor close to the chancel. She had a black rebozo over her head, and she was as still as the images of the saints along the walls.

She scrambled to her feet when I said her name. Her mouth worked stiffly, but no words came out. The shawl covering her hair accentuated the stubborn boniness of her face.

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes.” Her small voice was made smaller by the cavernous space around us. “How did you know–?”

“The posadero told me you’ve been here all day.”

She moved her arm in an abrupt downward gesture. “I don’t mean that. How did you know I was in Mexico?”

“You were seen – by other Americans.”

“I don’t believe you. Father sent you to bring me back, didn’t he? He promised that he wouldn’t. But he never kept his promises to me, not once in my life.”

“He kept this one.”

“Then why have you followed me here?”

“I didn’t make any promises, to you or anyone.”

“But you’re supposed to be working for Father. He said when he put me on the plane that he would call off the dogs once and for all.”

“He tried to. There isn’t anything more he can do for you now. Your father is dead, Harriet. He shot himself Friday morning.”

“You’re lying! He can’t be dead!”

The force of the words shook her body. She raised her hands to cover her face. I could see in her sleeves the flesh-colored tape securing the bandages at her wrists. I had seen such bandages before on would-be suicides.

“I was there when he shot himself. Before he did, he confessed the murders of Ralph Simpson and Dolly. He also said that he had murdered you. Why would your father do that?”

Her eyes glittered like wet stone between her fingers. “I have no idea.”

“I have. He knew that you had committed those two murders. He tried to take the blame for them and arrange it so we wouldn’t press the search for you. Then he silenced himself. I don’t think he wanted to live in any case; he had too much guilt of his own. Ronald Jaimet’s death may have been something less than a murder, but it was something more than an accident. And he must have known that his affair with Dolly led indirectly to your murdering her and Ralph Simpson. He had nothing to look forward to but your trial and the end of the Blackwell name – the same prospect you’re facing now.”

She removed her hands from her face. It had a queer glazed look, as if it had been fired like pottery. “I hate the Blackwell name. I wish my name was Smith or Jones or Gomez.”

“It wouldn’t change you or the facts. You can’t lose what you’ve done.”

“No.” She shook her head despondently. “There’s no hope for me. No deposit, no return, no nothing. I’ve been in here since early morning, trying to make contact. There is no contact.”

“Are you a member of this Church?”

“I’m not a member of anything. But I thought I could find peace here. The people seemed so happy yesterday coming out of Mass – so happy and peaceful.”

“They’re not running away from another life.”

“You call it life, what I had?” She screwed up her face as though she was trying to cry, but no tears came. “I did my best to end my so-called life. The first time the water was too cold. The second time Father wouldn’t let me. He broke in the bathroom door and stopped me. He bandaged my wrists and sent me here; he said that Mother would look after me. But when I went to her house in Ajijic she wouldn’t even come out and talk to me. She sent Keith out to the gate to fob me off with a lie. He tried to tell me that she had gone away and taken the money with her.”

“Keith Hatchen told you the truth. I’ve talked to him, and your mother as well. She went to California to try and help you. She’s waiting in Los Angeles.”