It was after 4 P.M. Romstead had returned with them to what he had learned by now was called the old Van Sickle place. Brubaker and another deputy had searched the ridge and the area behind it, found a few footprints and the tracks of a pickup truck or jeep, but no brass. The rifleman had taken his four cartridge cases with him, probably, as Brubaker had said, because they were hand loads instead of factory ammunition, possibly some necked-down and resized wildcat too distinctive to leave lying around. The ambulance had driven out across the flat in back of the house, and they’d carried Bonner’s exsanguinated body down from the hillside on a stretcher, looking pitifully shrunken and crumpled in on itself. Romstead had shown them the garbage dump, and after they’d come back to the office, he’d made a full statement and signed it. His face felt sunburned over the old tan and still had dust caked on it. His sweaty clothes had dried now in the air conditioning and stuck to him when he moved.
“Personally,” Brubaker said, “I think they set him up with a sucker phone call sometime this morning, because he took off right from his sister’s funeral without even going home to change clothes. But now we’ll never know. Any more than we’ll ever know what he found out in San Francisco or what they were afraid he’d found out. That’s the beauty of amateurs showing the police how to do it. By God, they don’t waste half their time sitting around on their dead asses making out reports like a bunch of dumb cops or even bothering to tell anybody what they’re doing.” Brubaker removed the cigar from his mouth as if to throw it against the wall but merely cursed again and reclamped it between his teeth.
“Well, he did give you the letter,” Romstead said. “When did it come, and specifically what did it say?”
“It came yesterday morning,” Brubaker said. “But you might as well read it, since it concerns your old man.” He grabbed it out of the confusion on his desk and passed it over.
It was written with a ball-point pen on a single sheet of cheap typing paper. Romstead read it.
Dear Jeri,
Heres enough for one anyway, its all I can spare the way it is now. But you could easy get that other like I told you on the phone, where I stashed it in the old mans car. For Gods sake dont call here again. If I have to say wrong number one more time hes going to guess who it is and if he even thinks I know where you are he’ll beat it out of me and dont think he couldend and wouldent.
Debra
Romstead sighed and dropped it back on the desk. “So he could, and he did.”
Brubaker nodded bleakly. “I’d say so.”
“What did the lab report say? Was the stuff cut?”
“Yes. But she still died of an overdose. She probably didn’t shoot it herself, though.”
“No,” Romstead said. “Of course not. If the stuff was in the car, probably behind the seat cushions somewhere, the dresser was a phony. And in that case, so was the whole thing. They were waiting for her out there—or he was, whoever the hell he is— knowing an addict would eventually show up where the junk was. Did you get the phone number?”
“We occasionally think of things like that,” Brubaker said wearily. He picked up another sheet of paper. “She came home on Tuesday of last week, apparently with enough of the stuff to keep her going for a few days, but by Monday she was climbing into the light fixtures. Monday evening, after Bonner’d gone to work, there were five toll calls to this number in San Francisco at twenty to thirty-minute intervals. Maybe sometimes the man would answer and she’d just hang up, or Debra would answer but he was still home, so she’d say wrong number. This, so help me God, to the home phone of a man who’s apparently trying to find her so he can kill her. Junk.” He shook his head and went on. “Anyway, she and Debra must have made connections on the fifth call, and Debra told her about the deck she’d hidden in your father’s car and maybe promised to send her enough for a fix if she could.
“I guess Jeri didn’t think that night she knew how to break into a house, but another thirty hours of withdrawal symptoms and she didn’t have any doubt of it at all. She could break into Fort Knox with a banana. So she went out there sometime after two o’clock Wednesday morning, as soon as Bonner was asleep. And in the meantime, apparently Debra’d been worked over till she broke down and told the man about it, so he was waiting. Obviously he didn’t guess about the letter, though.
“The San Francisco police got the name and address from the phone company. J. L. Stacey, probably an alias, in a furnished apartment out near North Beach, but when they got there, the birds were gone without a trace. Bonner, of course, couldn’t have got the information, so I guess he was just going it blind, trying to run down somebody who knew who Debra was.
“And, incidentally, while we’re on the subject of phone calls, both of those your father made”— Brubaker picked up another sheet of paper from the litter on his desk—” to Winegaard at seven A.M. July sixth and to Richter at ten fifteen A.M. July tenth, were from his home phone. So whatever he was doing out there at the Van Sickle place, he came home on Monday to phone and then left again, for God knows where until he showed up at the bank on the morning of the twelfth.”
“He didn’t go anywhere, from beginning to end,” Romstead said. “He was taken. He was kidnapped.”
Brubaker got up and began to pace the office. “Jesus Christ, when I think that I could’ve been a pimp or a geek in a sideshow, biting the heads off chickens! Look, Romstead, kidnap is a federal offense, and if we had one single damned shred of evidence to hang a kidnap case on, we could call in the FBI. We’d have a whole army of special agents working on it. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to them, but after they talked to Richter, they said forget it. They must have thought I was nuts. And Richter, believe me, is getting plenty pissed about it. He says he’s going to make a recording. First there was Sam Bolling, and then the San Francisco police, and then you, and then the FBI, and then me.
“So maybe I was wrong about the heroin theory, so I don’t have the faintest damned idea what he was doing out there at the old Van Sickle place or what he did with that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, there is no evidence whatever he was there, or anywhere else, against his will, and how in hell” —Brubaker dropped into his chair again and slammed a hand down on his desk among the papers— “how in hell—you tell me—could he have been kidnapped if he came into that bank himself—alone—to get the money?”
“I don’t know,” Romstead replied. “But I’m going to find out.” He got up.
“Well, there’s no way I can stop you from trying. But did you ever hear the old story about the man tracking the tiger through the jungle?”
Romstead nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“Well, if I were you I’d keep a good lookout behind. That second set of tiger tracks may be closer than you think.”
He went back to the motel and called Mayo. She grabbed up the phone on the first ring, and he gave a sigh of relief as he heard her voice.
“I’ve been worried all day,” she said.
“Not too worried to go out with another man. I tried to call you around eleven.”
“Oh, hell, of all the rotten luck. That’s when I ducked downstairs to get the mail. And I wasn’t gone five minutes. Did you find the place?”
“Yes. But there’s nobody there now and nothing to prove who they were.” He had no intention of saying anything about Bonner. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there. I’m not sure yet what flight I’ll be on, so don’t figure on meeting me at the airport. Just stay near the phone, and I’ll call as soon as I’m in town. Should be before ten.”
“Are you leaving for Reno now?”