“Perhaps that’s still possible.”
“Not on your life,” Ronda said, shaking his head vigorously. “He was a gentle, timid man, the exact opposite of the fighting Irishman you hear about and maybe meet, though I never have myself. One of the things that drove the police crazy when they were on the murder kick was the fact that they couldn’t find a single soul in Chicote who had a bad word to say about O’Gorman. No grudges, no peeves, no quarrels. If O’Gorman was done in—and there’s no doubt of it, in my mind—it must have been by a stranger, probably a hitchhiker he picked up.”
“Timid men don’t usually go in for picking up hitchhikers.”
“Well, he did. It was one of the few things he disagreed with Martha about. She thought it was a dangerous practice but that didn’t stop him. Sympathy for the underdog was what motivated him. I guess he felt like an underdog himself.”
“Why?”
“Oh, he was never much of a success, financially or any other way. Martha had the guts and force in the family, which is a good thing because in the following years she really needed them. The insurance company held off settling O’Gorman’s policy for almost a year because his body wasn’t found. Meanwhile Martha and the two children were penniless. She went back to work as a lab technician in the local hospital. She’s still there.”
“You seem to know her well.”
“My wife’s one of her close friends, they attended the same high school in Bakersfield. For a time there, when I had to print a lot of stuff about O’Gorman, things were cool between Martha and me. But she came to understanding that I was only doing my job. What’s your interest in the case, Quinn?”
Quinn said something vague about his work in Reno involving missing persons. Ronda seemed satisfied. Or, if he wasn’t, he pretended to be. He was a man who obviously enjoyed talking and welcomed an occasion for it.
“So he was murdered by a hitchhiker,” Quinn said. “Under what circumstances?”
“I can’t remember every detail after such a time lapse but I can give you a general picture if you like.”
“I would.”
“It was the middle of February, nearly five and a half years ago. It had been a winter of big rains—most of the news I printed was rainfall statistics and stories on whose basement was flooded and whose backyard had been washed out. That year the Rattlesnake River, about three miles east of town, was running high. Now, and every summer, it’s nothing but a dry ravine, so it’s kind of hard to imagine what a torrent it was then. To make a long story short, O’Gorman’s car crashed through the guardrail of the bridge and into the river. It was found a couple of days later when the flood subsided. A piece of cloth snagged on the door hinge had bloodstains on it, barely visible to the naked eye but quite clearly identified in the police lab. The blood was O’Gorman’s type and the cloth was a piece of the shirt he’d been wearing when he left the house that night after dinner.”
“And the body?”
“A few miles farther on, the Rattlesnake River joins the Torcido, which is fed by mountain snow and lives up to its name. Torcido means angry, twisted, resentful, and that about describes it, especially that year. O’Gorman wasn’t a big man. He could easily have been carried down the Rattlesnake River into the Torcido and never found again. That’s what the police believed then and still believe. There’s another possibility, that he was murdered in the car after a struggle which tore his shirt, and then buried some place. I myself go along with the river theory. O’Gorman picked up a hitchhiker— don’t forget it was a stormy night and a soft-hearted man like O’Gorman wouldn’t pass up anyone on the road—and the hitchhiker tried to rob him and O’Gorman put up a fight. I myself believe the man must have been a stranger in these parts and didn’t realize the river was only temporary. He may have thought the car would never be found.”
“And then what happened to the stranger?” Quinn said.
Ronda lit a cigarette and scowled at the burning match. “Well, there’s the weak point of the story, of course. He disappeared as completely as O’Gorman. For a while there the sheriff was picking up damn near everyone who wasn’t actually born in Chicote, but nothing was proved. I’m an amateur student of crime in a way, and it seems to me a crime of impulse like this one, even though it’s often bungled by lack of planning, may remain unsolved because of the very lack of planning.”
“Who decided that it was a crime of impulse?”
“The sheriff, the coroner, the coroner’s jury. Why? Don’t you agree?”
“All I know is what you’ve told me,” Quinn said. “And that hitchhiking stranger seems a little vague.”
“I admit that.”
“If he had a bloody struggle with O’Gorman, we’ll have to assume the stranger got some blood on his own clothes. Were there any shacks or cottages in the vicinity where he could have broken in to change his clothes, steal some food and so on?”
“A few. But they weren’t broken into, the sheriff’s men checked every one of them.”
“So we’re left with a very wet stranger, probably with blood on him.”
“The rain could have washed it away.”
“It’s not that easy,” Quinn said. “Put yourself in the stranger’s place. What would you have done?”
“Walked into town, bought some dry clothes.”
“It was night, the stores were closed.”
“Then I’d have checked into a motel, I guess.”
“You’d be pretty conspicuous, the clerk would certainly remember and probably report you.”
“Well, dammit, he must have done something,” Ronda said. “Maybe he got a ride with somebody else. All I know is, he disappeared.”
“Or she. Or they.”
“All right, she, it, him or her, they disappeared.”
“If they ever existed.”
Ronda leaned across the desk. “What are you getting at?”
“Suppose the person in the car wasn’t a stranger. Let’s say it was a friend, a close friend, even a relative.”
“I told you before, the sheriff couldn’t find a single person who’d say a word against O’Gorman.”
“The kind of person I’m thinking of wouldn’t be likely to come forward and admit he had a grudge if he’d just murdered O’Gorman. Or she.”
“You keep repeating or she. Why?”
“Why not? We’re only dealing in possibilities anyway.”
“I think you mean Martha O’Gorman.”
“Wives,” Quinn said dryly, “have been known to harbor grudges against husbands.”
“Not Martha. Besides, she was at home that night, with the children.”
“Who were in bed, sleeping?”
“Naturally they were in bed, sleeping,” Ronda said irritably. “It was about 10:30. What do you think they were doing, playing poker and having a few beers? Richard was only seven then, and Sally five.”
“How old was O’Gorman at the time?”
“Around your age, say forty.”
Quinn didn’t correct him. He felt forty, it seemed only fair that he should look it. “What about O’Gorman’s description?”
“Blue eyes, fair skin, black curly hair. Medium build, about five foot nine or ten. There was nothing particularly arresting about his appearance but he was nice-looking.”
“Have you a picture of him?”
“Five or six blown-up snapshots. Martha let me have them while she was still hoping O’Gorman would be found alive, maybe suffering from amnesia. Her hopes died hard but once they died, that was it. She’s utterly convinced O’Gorman’s car hit the bridge accidentally and O’Gorman was swept away by the river.”