“I can’t believe it.”
“I’m thinking maybe Drucker had some valuables on him when they put him in the ground, jewelry or something.”
“Cody Drucker?” Glen emphasized. “The only valuables he owned are in the pawn shop on West Street; that old sod would sell anything for a bottle. And even if he did have something on him, how come they didn’t just open the coffin right there instead of carrying the whole thing away?”
“Maybe they couldn’t open it right there,” Kurt said, hunting for a cigarette. “Coffins are built to last these days. Getting into one takes more than a screwdriver and a little elbow grease. I was just reading the other day, D.C. Police had to exhume a body for an old murder case and they needed a damn acetylene rig to get it open. Said the lid had locking pins… Anyway, who knows? Any possibility is ridiculous.”
Kurt lit his cigarette and shivered; spring fever had helped him forget that the nights would still be chilly for a while. Nipping air cut through the fabric of his shirt and made him break out in gooseflesh. The night was crisp and lavender. Stars winked keenly, as if vacillating, and the wind slipped like a whisper through the great shadow of the access road. Toward the north end of the property, atop the high hill, Belleau Wood mansion stood still and clear, the moon cutting its shape sharp as cracked glass against the sky.
Kurt stared at the far-off house. He could see a window lit. “Tell me about your boss,” he said, and even as he smoked and flicked ashes, he did not move his eyes away from the mansion’s black, cut-out shape.
“Dr. Willard? Not much to tell. Average guy, I guess—for rich. Well, maybe a little stuck up. I don’t see him much, nobody does.”
“What the hell does the guy do with his time?”
Glen shrugged. “He doesn’t work, if that’s what you mean. I guess he just sits around and counts his money. He’s no skinflint, though. Pays twenty an hour, double time for anything over forty. Last year he slipped me a five-hundred-dollar bill for Christmas.”
“A five-century note? I didn’t know they made them. Who’s on it?”
“I don’t know. McKinley, I think, or Grover Cleveland— some no-dick, shithouse president like that. All I saw was the numbers. Willard’s one generous son of a bitch. Maybe he’ll give me a G-note this year.”
“What kind of doctor is he?”
“Retired, and I don’t know much beyond that. About the only time I see him is when I gotta report some security violation, trespassers, poachers, that kind of shit, which is only about once every couple of weeks. His wife usually gives me my paychecks.”
Kurt expertly jettisoned his cigarette to the middle of the road, where it burst into a spatter of orange sparks. “Any kids?”
“Nope. Willard hates kids, calls them the spawn of hell.”
“What’s his wife look like?”
“Brunette, cute, decent bod. You’ve probably seen her around. He married her when he moved into the mansion, right after he hired me, as a matter of fact. I was the only one who went to the wedding; they needed a witness. I think she’s around mainly for the squeeze, you tell me. She’s thirty, and he’s just over fifty. She spends most of her time going on trips by herself, Ocean City, Virginia Beach, Vegas.”
“And Willard doesn’t go with her?”
“Nope. He doesn’t like to travel that much.”
“But he’s rich. He must take a vacation sometime.”
Glen shook his head. “His idea of fun is reading the New England Journal of Medicine and watching Discovery Channel. Since he’s been at Belleau Wood, I seriously doubt that he’s even crossed the state line. Oh, sure, he goes out to eat a lot with Nancy—that’s his wife—and every week or so, he’ll drive out to McKeldin Library or the public research place at N.I.H.”
The more Kurt was told, the less he understood. “Wait a minute. If he’s not a practicing doctor, why does he go to medical libraries?”
“I don’t know. I guess he just likes to keep up with the trade.”
Whetted, Kurt fired up another smoke, leaned closer to the truck window. “And you’ve known him…since he bought Belleau Wood?”
“He didn’t buy Belleau Wood; it was his to begin with. He’s the last of a loaded family—the Willard holdings include property all over Maryland and Virginia, lots of logging land and raw materials. His father supposedly hit the jackpot in ore round about World War II, bit the hoagie six or seven years ago. That’s when Willard moved back to Belleau Wood.”
“Where did he live before that?”
“Got no idea. You’d have to ask his wife.”
“Speaking of his wife,” Kurt said, unable now to stop with questions that didn’t concern him, “how did he get involved with her in the first place? You said he married her shortly after he moved here.”
“That’s right. In fact, I’ve known Dr. Willard a little bit longer than she has. She was a research technician at N.I.H.; that’s where he met her. He’d only known her about a month before they got hitched.”
“That sure sounds pretty screwy,” Kurt said. He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the house. “I’ve heard of love at first sight, but that’s a bit much.”
“Well, I admit Willard’s not what you’d call every girl’s summer dream, more like a well-educated stick in the mud. I think his bank account had more to do with it than anything else.”
“Yeah, yeah, but even so, don’t you smell a rat in there somewhere?”
Glen touched his lower lip, searching. “No. Should I?”
“Look, here’s what we got,” Kurt said, spreading his hands out in front of him. “First we got this eightball doctor who nobody knows or even sees. Next we got this girl who practically marries him before she learns his name, and who used to be into medical research. Lastly we got a fucking hole in the ground where Cody Drucker’s body is supposed to be.”
Glen grinned openmouthed within the darkness of the cab. “Are you trying to say… You mean, you think…”
“Well, what the hell? Maybe he’s got some kooky experiment going, and he needed a cadaver.”
Glen broke out laughing. “Jesus, Kurt. His name is Willard, not Frankenstein. Yeah, I can just see it, him and Nancy sneaking onto Beall with picks and shovels. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you’ve been drinking some of that panther piss they make back in the hills. That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Well,” Kurt said, “it was just a thought.”
««—»»
At midnight, Kurt’s shift came to an official end. He parked at the town police station, a converted white-stucco cottage at the end of a quarter-mile gravel road which neared Tylersville’s southernmost boundary. There, he turned over the cruiser, keys, and portable radio to Doug Swaggert, the midnight-to-eight man. Swaggert was the most seasoned officer on the force, having learned the ropes walking a beat in Baltimore for years. Kurt wasn’t sure why Doug had transferred to T-ville, but he guessed that bad timing might be a factor. “It’s hard to really get into police work when you’re on administrative leave six months out of the year,” Swaggert had told him once. “But don’t worry, they were all good shoots.” Swaggert was a hard cop, with hard rules, and also respected by the populace more than any of the others. Kurt didn’t know whether this was good or bad; at times it seemed that when Swaggert didn’t have trouble to tend to, he’d go looking for it, and when he couldn’t find any, he’d make some of his own. He fit the mold almost too well; short, dark hair, a face that belonged on a recruiting poster, and a look in his eyes that could make a pack of pissed-off mountain gorillas turn around and jog on home. The G. Gordon Liddy mustache didn’t help, and neither did the unbroken string of pistol championships and the fact that he could do more one-armed pull-ups than anyone else could do two-armed. In the long and short of it, Doug Swaggert was the kind of guy who carried his balls around in a bushel basket.