His eyebrows rose. “How do you know that?”
“From the way she talked. Also, I saw them together.”
“Isn’t that rather subjective evidence?”
“You can’t ignore it, though. People are human. That includes the girls in Corona, and the girls who are on their way there.”
“We won’t argue.” His face had stiffened into an official mask. He was a bureaucrat, no matter how reluctant “She’s accessory to murder in any case. We know that Bozey shot Aquista.”
“Do we know it for certain?”
“I’m convinced he shot both Aquista and Kerrigan. The bullets that killed them came from the same gun. Look at Bozey’s record. It’s pure chance that he hadn’t killed before. He was ready to kill for that load of whisky. It was better than money to him, better than the kind of money he had. There are still states in this Union where good bootleg liquor is a valuable commodity.”
“New Mexico is one. The reservation Indians pay high for it.”
“I’m not forgetting it. We’re watching all the highways out of the state. When he tries to drive that truck across the border, we’ll take him. And we’ll have our case wrapped up.”
“In tissue paper.”
“What about tissue paper?” he snapped.
“It doesn’t hold water. You said Aquista and Kerrigan were shot with the same gun.”
“That’s correct. Danelaw did a good job with the bullets. The Kerrigan slug was smashed by the skullbone, but there’s enough of it left for positive identification. It came from the same barrel as the slug in Aquista’s chest.”
“What kind of a barrel?”
“A .38-caliber revolver. Danelaw thinks it was probably an old police positive.”
“If your ballistics evidence is sound, it lets Bozey out. He didn’t shoot Kerrigan.”
“I say he did.”
“Wait a minute. Consider what that means. It means he drove the truck down the highway from the airbase to the motor court, at a time when every cop in the county was looking for him. Parked his hot rig in front of the motor court and went inside and shot his partner in the crime. What motive could he have to justify the risk?”
Westmore leaned forward across the desk, resting his weight on spread fingers, in prosecutor’s position. “Kerrigan’s death erased a witness against him, a witness who would be dangerous as soon as he found out that his payoff money was useless. And Kerrigan was running away with his girl.”
“It doesn’t stand up,” I said. “Bozey had what he wanted, and he was on his way with it. He wouldn’t double back for the simple satisfaction of blowing Kerrigan’s head off. And if he didn’t do one murder, he didn’t do the other – provided Danelaw knows what he’s talking about.”
“I have complete confidence in Danelaw. And I say Bozey did both murders. Or else he killed Aquista, then lent his gun to the girl to use on Kerrigan.”
“That’s very unlikely.”
“On the contrary. Those two suppositions are the only possible ones that fit the facts. There’s a certain law of economy in the interpretation of evidence.”
“It’s false economy if you don’t cover all the facts.”
He gave me a narrow cross-questioner’s stare. “Is there more evidence that you’re cognizant of and I’m not?”
I returned his stare, as blandly as I knew how. He wasn’t the kind you could get to know in an hour, or a year. I doubted that a man as jumpily brilliant as Westmore would have his well-manicured fingers in a courthouse pie. But politics made stranger bedfellows than sex.
I got up and went to the window. Outside on the lawn a gang of trusties in jail dungarees were clipping the courthouse fire-thorn. I had no desire to join them. Somewhere out of sight, a power mower droned like an insect caught in the slow amber of the afternoon.
“I gather that you have,” he said at my shoulder.
“Nothing concrete.”
“Let’s have it. I don’t have time to waste.”
“Meyer told me a tale about a gun. I don’t know that I believe it. The significant thing is that he brought it up himself in the first place. He may have been trying to account for the fact that it’s missing.”
“What sort of a gun?”
“A .38 revolver, police positive. He claims that he lent it to his daughter Anne some time last fall. That she asked him for a weapon to protect herself against Tony Aquista.”
“Against Aquista?”
“That’s Meyer’s story. He may be lying.”
“I don’t understand – I thought you were working for Meyer.”
“Not any more. Something came up between us that happened ten years ago. Was that before your time?”
“Hardly. I’ve been in practice here for nearly fifteen years.”
“You probably remember the case, then. Meyer was hauled into court for mistreating his younger daughter.”
“I remember,” he said grimly. “The case never came to trial, however. The girl was too frightened to testify. And I suppose Meyer did some wire-pulling. The best Judge Craig could do was find his home an unfit place for minors, and take the child out of his hands.”
“What’s Meyer’s reputation, apart from that?”
“I believe he was a rough customer in his younger days. And I’ve heard he made his original capital driving for Mexican rumrunners in the twenties. That was before my time.”
“The sheriff isn’t much of a picker when it comes to inlaws.”
“You don’t judge a man by his father-in-law,” Westmore said severely. “Church knew all about the old man when he married Hilda. His main idea was to get both of the girls out of Meyer’s reach. He told me that himself one night, over a couple of highballs.”
“There’s money in the family, isn’t there?”
His face hardened. “If you’re fishing for what I think you are, you can reel in your line. Money wouldn’t interest the sheriff. He works a sixteen-hour day for less money than I get. Church simply fell in love with Meyer’s daughter and married her. He does what he thinks is right, without regard for consequences.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, stroking the bandaged side of my face. “Is that true of his identification man, Danelaw?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Can you trust Danelaw not to twist facts, no matter where they lead?”
“Absolutely.”
“Even if they lead into his own department?”
“You can’t mean Brandon Church.”
I was on very thin ice and I backed away a little. “That’s your inference.”
Westmore’s eyes glinted like nailheads, and he smiled frostily. “Danelaw wants to be sheriff more than anything else in the world.”
“Then send him over to Meyer’s house. The old man has some kind of a shooting-gallery rigged up in his basement. Danelaw may find some more of those .38 slugs that he’s been working with. And then again he may not.”
Chapter 22
Kate Kerrigan was waiting in my car.
“I was afraid I’d miss you,” she said when I opened the door. “I took a taxi down. Mr. MacGowan phoned from the powerhouse.”
“For me?”
“Yes, he’s on his way to my house to see you. He wasn’t very specific, but I think it’s something about his granddaughter. He asked me not to mention his call to anyone but you.”
I got in and started the car. High school had let out. A few blocks from the courthouse, an advance guard of hotrods and jalopies stormed the streets, followed by an irregular army of boys in jeans and pretty, barelegged girls. Some of the girls were about the same age as Jo. I wondered what set her apart from them, what made the difference.
Kate changed the direction of my thoughts. “To think,” she said, “that I was one of those children, less than ten years ago. The luckiest one. Father was still alive then, and I was Homecoming queen, and the captain of the football team took me to the prom. I thought that everything was going to be wonderful, all the rest of my life. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”