Next, I called R.C.M.P. headquarters in Vancouver to ask some questions about George Rambeau. The answers came over the line in clipped Canadian tones. George and his dog had disappeared from his cabin below Red Pass in the fall of 1945. Their bodies hadn’t been recovered until the following May, and by that time they consisted of parts of the two skeletons. These included George Rambeau’s skull, which had been pierced in the right front and left rear quadrants by a heavy-caliber bullet. The bullet had not been recovered. Who fired it, or when or why, had never been determined. The dog, a husky, had also been shot through the head.
I walked over to the courthouse to pass the word to Carlson. He was in the basement shooting gallery with Lieutenant Scott, who was firing test rounds from Fernando Rambeau’s .30/30 repeater.
I gave them the official account of the accident. “But since George Rambeau’s dog was shot, too, it probably wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“I see what you mean,” Carlson said. “It’s going to be rough, spreading all this stuff out in court about Mr. Hooper. We have to nail it down, though.”
I went back to my hotel and to bed, but the process of nailing down the case against Rambeau continued through the night. By morning, Lieutenant Scott had detailed comparisons set up between the test-fired slugs and the ones dug out of Hooper and the dog. I looked at his evidence through a comparison microscope. It left no doubt in my mind that the slugs that killed Allan Hooper and the dog Otto had come from Rambeau’s gun.
But Rambeau still wouldn’t talk, even to phone his wife or ask for a lawyer.
“We’ll take you out to the scene of the crime,” Carlson said. “I’ve cracked tougher nuts than you, boy.”
We rode in the back seat of his car with Fernando handcuffed between us. Lieutenant Scott did the driving. Rambeau groaned and pulled against his handcuffs. He was very close to the breaking point, I thought.
It came a few minutes later when the car turned up the lane past the Hoopers’ mailbox. He burst into sudden fierce tears as if a pressure gauge in his head had broken. It was strange to see a bearded man crying like a boy, and whimpering, “I don’t want to go up there.”
“Because you shot him?” Carlson said.
“I shot the dog. I confess I shot the dog,” Rambeau said.
“And the man?”
“No!” he cried. “I never killed a man. Mr. Hooper was the one who did. He followed my brother out in the woods and shot him.”
“If you knew that,” I said, “why didn’t you tell the Mounties years ago?”
“I didn’t know it then. I was seven years old. How would I understand? When Mrs. Hooper came to our cabin to be with my brother, how would I know it was a serious thing? Or when Mr. Hooper asked me if she had been there? I didn’t know he was her husband. I thought he was her father checking up. I knew I shouldn’t have told him – I could see it in his face the minute after – but I didn’t understand the situation until the other night, when I talked to Mrs. Hooper.”
“Did she know that her husband had shot George?”
“She didn’t even know George had been killed. They never went back to the Fraser River after 1945. But when we put our facts together, we agreed he must have done it. I came out here next morning to get even. The dog came out to the gate. It wasn’t real to me – I was drinking most of the night – it wasn’t real to me until the dog went down. I shot him. Mr. Hooper shot my dog. But when he came out of the house himself, I couldn’t pull the trigger. I yelled at him and ran away.”
“What did you yell?” I said.
“The same thing I told him on the telephone: ‘Remember Mount Robson.’ ”
A yellow cab, which looked out of place in the canyon, came over the ridge above us. Lieutenant Scott waved it to a stop. The driver said he’d just brought Mrs. Hooper home from the airport and wanted to know if that constituted a felony. Scott waved him on.
“I wonder what she was doing at the airport,” Carlson said.
“Coming home from Vegas. She tried to call me from there last night. I forgot to tell you.”
“You don’t forget important things like that,” Carlson said.
“I suppose I wanted her to come home under her own power.”
“In case she shot her husband?”
“More or less.”
“She didn’t. Fernando shot him, didn’t you, boy?”
“I shot the dog. I am innocent of the man.” He turned to me: “Tell her that. Tell her I am sorry about the dog. I came out here to surrender the gun and tell her yesterday. I don’t trust myself with guns.”
“With darn good reason,” Carlson said. “We know you shot Mr. Hooper. Ballistic evidence doesn’t lie.”
Rambeau screeched in his ear, “You’re a liar! You’re all liars!”
Carlson swung his open hand against the side of Rambeau’s face. “Don’t call me names, little man.”
Lieutenant Scott spoke without taking his eyes from the road. “I wouldn’t hit him, Chief. You wouldn’t want to damage our case.”
Carlson subsided, and we drove on up to the house. Carlson went in without knocking. The guard at the door discouraged me from following him.
I could hear Fay’s voice on the other side of the door, too low to be understood. Carlson said something to her.
“Get out! Get out of my house, you killer!” Fay cried out sharply.
Carlson didn’t come out. I went in instead. One of his arms was wrapped around her body; the other hand was covering her mouth. I got his Adam’s apple in the crook of my left arm, pulled him away from her, and threw him over my left hip. He went down clanking and got up holding his revolver.
He should have shot me right away. But he gave Fay Hooper time to save my life.
She stepped in front of me. “Shoot me, Mr. Carlson. You might as well. You shot the one man I ever cared for.”
“Your husband shot George Rambeau, if that’s who you mean. I ought to know. I was there.” Carlson scowled down at his gun, and replaced it in his holster.
Lieutenant Scott was watching him from the doorway.
“You were there?” I said to Carlson. “Yesterday you told me Hooper was alone when he shot Rambeau.”
“He was. When I said I was there, I meant in the general neighborhood.”
“Don’t believe him,” Fay said. “He fired the gun that killed George, and it was no accident. The two of them hunted George down in the woods. My husband planned to shoot him himself, but George’s dog came at him and he had to dispose of it. By that time, George had drawn a bead on Allan. Mr. Carlson shot him. It was hardly a coincidence that the next spring Allan financed his campaign for sheriff.”
“She’s making it up,” Carlson said. “She wasn’t within ten miles of the place.”
“But you were, Mr. Carlson, and so was Allan. He told me the whole story yesterday, after we found Otto. Once that happened, he knew that everything was bound to come out. I already suspected him, of course, after I talked to Fernando. Allan filled in the details himself. He thought, since he hadn’t killed George personally, I would be able to forgive him. But I couldn’t. I left him and flew to Nevada, intending to divorce him. I’ve been intending to for twenty years.”
Carlson said: “Are you sure you didn’t shoot him before you left?”
“How could she have?” I said. “Ballistics don’t lie, and the ballistic evidence says he was shot with Fernando’s rifle. Nobody had access to it but Fernando and you. You stopped him on the road and knocked him out, took his rifle and used it to kill Hooper. You killed him for the same reason that Hooper buried the dog – to keep the past buried. You thought Hooper was the only witness to the murder of George Rambeau. But by that time, Mrs. Hooper knew about it, too.”