Keller took one of the sheets he’d nodded at and looked at a color photo of three men standing next to a horse. A fourth man, the jockey, was on top of the horse, and one of the men was holding a trophy, to be presented to the horse, the jockey, or the owner. Keller couldn’t tell which, nor did he know which of the men was Wheeler — although he was ready to rule out the jockey.
He looked at the other photos, and there was only one man who appeared in all three. In one he was with two women, posing for the camera, while the third shot showed him and another man in conversation. In each of the pictures Wheeler was the dominant figure, taller than anyone else, except for the horse. He dressed in expensive suits conservatively cut, and wore them with the ease of a retired athlete. His dark hair was well barbered, his face deeply tanned, and he wore a mustache.
“‘Financier, sportsman, and philanthropist,’” Keller read aloud.
“A hell of a guy,” Dot said. “On all these committees for civic betterment. Patron of local cultural events. That one woman there is an opera star, and there was a pretty good shot of him shaking hands with the new mayor, but I thought three was plenty.”
“You could have a hundred pictures,” Taggert said, “and that’s as close as you’re gonna get to him, because you can’t just pick up a Bible and go ring his doorbell. He’s got a house that’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a castle, up on a hill with an electric fence around the whole property. You got to go through a gate to get close to the house, and the guy on the gate confirms by intercom before he lets anyone in. If you got over the fence, you’d have the dogs to contend with, and you couldn’t deal with them the way you did with poor Sulky. Man, I can’t believe you killed my dog.”
“Then don’t.”
“They’re Rhodesian ridgebacks, a boy and a girl, and if you took a swat at one of them, he’d take your hand off at the wrist, while his sister was having your balls for dinner. Get past ’em somehow and make it into the house and he’s got four guys on staff, and they’ve all got guns and know how to use ’em. When he leaves the house, two of them go with him, one to drive and one to ride shotgun. The other two stick around and guard the house.”
“All those precautions,” Keller said. “I guess a lot of people must have tried to kill him over the years.”
“Why? Mr. Wheeler’s respected throughout the state, he calls the mayor and the governor by their first names. As far as I know, there’s never been a single attempt on his life.”
“No kidding. Where do you keep your guns?”
“My guns?”
“You know.” He pointed his finger, wiggled his thumb. “Bang! Your guns.”
There was a locked gun rack in the den, and the key was where Taggert had said it would be — and, Keller thought, right where any kid would look for it. Keller took the shotgun and slipped a few shells in his pocket. He left the rifle in the rack. He could fire a rifle but wasn’t that confident of his ability to hit anything with it. With a shotgun, all you had to do was get close enough to the target. A clay pigeon might present a certain challenge, but a human being standing still would be pretty hard to miss.
“They’re for hunting,” Taggert said, “and if I’ve gone out three times in the last ten years it’s a lot. Hell, if I was a hunter, you think my dog’d be a corgi? I still can’t believe you killed my dog.”
“You said that before. You must have handguns.”
“Just the one, in the bedside table. For emergencies.”
It was a revolver, a.38 Ivor Johnson, immobilized with a cylinder lock. Keller had a vision of an intruder surprising the Taggerts in their sleep, and Taggert yanking the gun out and rushing to the den for the key. Handy.
“It’s hard to believe you’re a pro,” Taggert said. “Taking my guns? You didn’t bring your own?”
“You offered me a choice of guns in Des Moines,” Keller reminded him. “So I’ve come to think of you as my regular supplier.”
“You took the revolver. Were you even planning on using it?”
“No,” Keller said, “but it came in handy later on.”
“You could have an AK-47 and you wouldn’t have a chance with Mr. Wheeler. You know what I would do in your position?”
“Tell me.”
“Put the guns back, let yourselves out, and go home. Mr. Wheeler won’t send anybody after you because he’ll never know you were here. He’s sure not about to hear it from me.”
“You can tell him you broke your leg tripping over your dog.”
“Jesus,” Taggert said. “I can’t believe you killed the poor damn dog.”
“Let’s be clear on this,” Keller said. “Packing up and going home, that’s not on the table. So what you’ve got to do is come up with a way for us to get to him.”
“Mr. Wheeler, you mean.”
“Right.”
“You want to use my gun, and you want me to work out how you’re gonna do it.”
“That’s your best shot.”
“It’s my best shot? How the hell do you figure that?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Keller told him. “That’s the only way you stand a chance of coming out of this alive. Say we go up against Wheeler and we wind up dead.”
“Which you will.”
“If we do, so do you. He’ll know how we got to him. We’ll tell him if he asks, and he’ll figure it out if we don’t. How long do you figure he’d let you live, and how far could you run with a broken leg?”
“And if I help you, and you get lucky? Then you turn around and kill me.”
“Not if you help us. Why kill you?”
“Shit, why kill Mr. Wheeler, for all you’re going to get out of it? Why would you kill me? Because you’re some kind of a psychopath, is all I can think of. Look what you went and did to Sulky.”
“Jesus,” Dot said.
“I still can’t believe it,” Taggert said. “I can’t believe you killed a poor old dog like that.”
“I can’t fucking stand any more of this,” Dot said, and went over to the door Keller had closed earlier. She opened it and made clucking noises, and Taggert turned his head in time to see the old dog waddle into the room.
“My God,” he said.
“It’s Sulky,” Dot announced, “back from the dead, and I bet you can’t believe that, either.”
39
“If you didn’t have to go and break my leg,” Taggert said, “this part would be a whole lot easier.”
Keller couldn’t argue the point. Getting the man from the living room floor to the back seat of his Cadillac took a lot of work on everybody’s part. Keller had snipped the wire from around his ankles, which made it a little easier, but security concerns had led him to leave Taggert’s wrists tied together behind his back. The whole process, through the kitchen and into the garage, was difficult to negotiate, and Taggert inevitably bumped into something here and there, and yelped with pain.
“What’s funny,” Taggert said, “is I was ready to beg you to take me in the car. Instead of killing me right there in my own house. On account of I didn’t want her to walk in and find her husband dead on the floor. I figured it was bad enough she’d come in and trip over the dead dog. See, this was back when I still thought the dog was dead.”
“Now she’ll trip over the live dog.”
Taggert didn’t seem to appreciate the line. It was hard to tell, he was in back where Keller couldn’t see his face, not and concentrate on his driving at the same time. Dot would have enjoyed it, but she was in the other car, tagging along in Keller’s wake. So there were no cars in the garage at 71 Belle Mead Lane, and the garage door was shut and the other doors locked, and the only signs of their visit were the absence of a shotgun and a revolver, both now in the trunk of the Cadillac, a table lamp that refused to light, and a dent in one wall where the glass ashtray had struck it.