Sue Kelton and her son blinked in the light of the single overhead bulb, the boy still holding the pillow he’d planned on smothering his stepfather with.
Only there wasn’t anybody to smother. The lumpy shape under the sheet had been artistically made up out of the wadded blankets taken from my cabin.
Sue Kelton’s mouth worked, trying to shape the first instinctive denial, and Teddy Kelton dropped the pillow and took a step toward me, fists clenching. I didn’t actually aim the Commander at him, I just lifted it a little, giving the kid the word that he was about to do something really stupid.
Outside, there were more running footfalls as Lisette and the two San Bernardino deputies came tearing across from next-door, responding to the cabin’s light coming on.
Rupe Kelton looked almost as bad as when we’d hauled him out of the wreck that afternoon. Now, his stepfamily was under arrest for his attempted murder. He didn’t much want to believe it and who could blame him?
We’d smuggled the old guy into Lisette’s cabin after lights-out and Doc Purcell had managed him while we’d set up the bushwhack. I’d called the doc back to help us keep Kelton covered that evening. After he’d left for the second time, Purcell had parked down the highway and had walked back with the men from the Barstow sheriff’s station.
“Sue wouldn’t do that,” Kelton mumbled, staring down at his sheet-covered knees. “I knew she wasn’t all that happy, but she wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kelton, but your wife’s already copped to it.” I stood at the foot of the iron-framed bed, my thumbs hooked in my belt. “She’s taking responsibility for the whole thing. I guess she wants to keep as much of the heat off her son as she can, although he was in on the deal all the way.”
“But why?”
“An old story. She wanted to move back to what she figured was civilization and you were the one holding her back.”
“Didn’t know it was getting that bad,” he said dully. “If I’d known, I’d have sold out. I would. Or I’d have given her a divorce, if that’s what she really wanted.”
I could only shrug. “It wasn’t just that. She figured any alimony you could pay wouldn’t be worth it, and the only disposable asset you possessed was Devlin station. Only to dispose of it, she first had to dispose of you.”
I couldn’t dress it up any prettier. In the weeping hysteria that had followed her arrest, Sue Kelton had made it clear that her April... well, July-September marriage had only been about the bucks.
Lisette sat on one edge of Kelton’s bed, one small hand lightly stroking his skinny shoulder, trying to make him feel not so all alone. She knows something about being alone and being used. Inside of that sleek sophisticate’s armor was a big bowl of mush for the kicked-around of this world. Dr. Purcell sat on the other side, frowning over the old man’s pulse.
Kelton shook his head, wanting it all to go away. “I still don’t understand, Deputy. You’re sayin’ they tried to kill me, but I only had a car accident. That wasn’t anybody’s fault but mine.”
“It wasn’t any kind of accident, sir,” I replied. “You were supposed to die in that wreck. Only your wife didn’t figure on you getting stuck behind those slow movers along with the rest of us. The speed limit on this stretch of Route 66 is normally fifty-five. But you were only doing about thirty when you went off the road. The pile-up that was supposed to kill you only banged you up some.”
“But nothin’ happened!” he protested. “I just kinda dozed off.”
“You were being poisoned, sir.”
“Poisoned?”
“The boy knows what he’s talking about, Rupe,” Doc Purcell interjected. “Carbon dioxide poisoning. Looking back, the symptoms stuck out all over you, but it was something I just wasn’t looking for. You were suffocating and you never knew it.”
“Suffocating?” The old man tried to grope back to his last memories before the crash. “I remember it feelin’ kinda close in the truck, but I didn’t want to crack the window because it was so nice and cool inside.”
“There was a reason for that,” I replied. “Who set up the swamp cooler on your truck this afternoon?”
“Why, Teddy said he’d do it.” A hint of bitterness leaked into Kelton’s voice. “I guess I shoulda known right then something was up. That boy’s never done me a favor before, and it was damn rare that he ever did anything at all.”
“He wasn’t doing you any favors today. He and his mom packed your swamp cooler full of dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide, instead of regular water ice. That’s why your cooler was working so well. Dry ice is a whole lot colder than the good old wet kind.
“But it still melts, or rather vaporizes back into carbon dioxide gas. The airflow coming in through your swamp cooler was heavily contaminated. In the confined space of your truck cab the concentration gradually built up high enough to knock you woozy. Since you were feeling cool and you weren’t exerting, you didn’t feel yourself getting short of breath until it was too late and you were going off the road. It was a neat move. A coroner likely wouldn’t have noticed a thing and it would have been written off as a plain old traffic fatality.”
Lisette nodded in thoughtful approval. Back in Chicago in the good old days, certain members of her family had managed a subsidiary of Murder Inc. and, while she’s pretty much gone straight, she could still appreciate a slick rub-out when she saw one. “Where’d they get the stuff from, Kevin?” she asked. “You can’t pick dry ice up just anywhere. Especially out here.”
“It was brought to them, Princess. You had the weekly dairy delivery for your lunchroom this morning, didn’t you, Mr. Kelton?”
“Sure thing.” He nodded. “Our milk and ice cream and such, same as usual. I signed for it a little while before I started in to Barstow.”
“That’s where the murder weapon came from. I talked with the dairy that services all of the stations along this stretch of 66. Their delivery truck doesn’t use mechanical refrigeration. It’s just a heavily insulated, hard-side van. They use blocks of dry ice to keep everything cold. While the delivery driver was making his drop-off, your stepson snuck out and swiped a chunk of the stuff. The San Bernardino lab crew was able to lift some of his fingerprints from the cold-locker handles and the side of the truck.
“While you were getting dressed to go to town, your wife and your stepson were packing your swamp cooler full of frozen poison gas. Their fingerprints were all over the cooler casing.”
“Damn,” Kelton repeated. A flicker of a rueful smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Sue always said this place would be the death of me, an’ she was damn near right.”
I kinda had a hunch then that the old sand lizard was gonna be okay. If you’re tough enough to survive the high desert, there’s not a lot that can kill you.
“Dry ice, for Christ’s sake.” Doc Purcell tossed his stethoscope back into the fishing-tackle box he used for a medical kit. “I don’t know how the hell you ever came up with that one, Deputy. I’d never have thought of it, and after thirty years of patching up after Barstow Saturday nights I’d thought I’d seen it all.”
“There were a couple of things,” I replied. “For one, when I recovered the swamp cooler from the wreck site, both the reservoir and the wick filter were bone dry. Sure, ice melts and water evaporates rapidly in the high desert, but not that fast. There should have been some residual moisture left in that cooler if it had been loaded with frozen water. But dry ice evaporates away into nothing.”
The doc digested the idea. “All right, fine. But here’s the question, quiz kid. What made you suspicious of Rupe’s swamp cooler in the first place?”