“Kendrick was having an affair with my wife. All right. Hypothesis. Suppose Ross Calisher stumbles across the two of them one night. He’s ignorant of this affair. He threatens to tell me what he knows—unless Gwen bestows the same favors on him that she’s been bestowing on Kendrick. You follow?”
“Go on.”
“Kendrick’s got a jealous streak a mile wide. It’s a funny story, Trooper, it’s a Goddamned comedy. Kendrick doesn’t want Calisher screwing my wife.”
“There’s more than that.”
Rand nodded. “Hypothesis. Kendrick doesn’t know I’m already fully aware of his affair with Gwen. He knows if she goes to Nevada, say, and files for divorce, she won’t get much of a financial settlement out of me if I can file a countersuit and charge her with adultery and prove it. In a state that doesn’t recognize community property, adultery is grounds for getting cut off without a penny. Now Kendrick’s just as greedy as anybody else. He not only wants my wife, he wants my money.
“Here’s the next part of the comedy routine: he doesn’t know about the quit-claim Gwen signed, the deal she made when she married me. So Kendrick thinks he can’t afford to have Calisher be a witness to my wife’s adultery. He thinks it would cost him a lot of money if I had a witness like that. It’s damned funny. I laughed a lot at the time. He kills a man for profit and then it turns out he’s bought a pig in a poke. This is all hypothetical, you understand.”
“Sure it is.”
“But now we get into a little trouble,” Rand said. His voice was getting smoother all the time. “I’d like to help you out but here’s the rub. Let’s finish the hypothesis. Let’s assume I caught Kendrick red-handed when he shot Calisher. Let’s assume I brought him up to the office and got the whole thing on tape. A conversation between Kendrick and me in which Kendrick admitted his crime. Now the problem is, I can’t allow that tape out of my hands, can I? It’s got my voice on it as well as Kendrick’s. If it goes into court there’s no way I come out of it with a clean record.”
“Lying,” Watchman said, “is getting to be a habit with you. You just don’t know when to quit.” He had no patience left for this. “If that was your evidence it wouldn’t have been any use to you. Kendrick would know you could never afford to give it to the police—it would take you right down with him as an accessory after the fact. Now let’s have the truth. You’re stalling and there’s nothing left to stall for. You’ve got evidence on him and it’s leakproof or you wouldn’t have kept him in your pocket all these years.”
Rand made a fist and opened it, empty. “All right. What the hell. I’ve got two things. One’s a paraffin test. I had a private lab do an analysis on Kendrick’s hand the morning after the shooting. It’s dated, bonded and notarized. It shows he’d fired a gun within the past twenty-four hours. The second thing’s his own signed confession. Holograph, all in his own handwriting. Dated the day after the murder. He put in every detail. Every single detail except the fact that I’d seen the shooting through the window. My name never appears in it except as Ross’s employer and Gwen’s husband. It’s in the form of a suicide note. If I ever decided to produce the thing I could always say I just found it and he must have written the note and gone out somewhere to kill himself but then changed his mind.”
“And where was the confession supposed to be hiding between then and now?”
“What difference does that make? I’ll produce it.”
“No good. It’s not admissible evidence unless we can show how we got it.”
“That’s your problem,” Rand said. “You asked for the evidence, I’m producing it. How you use it is your problem.”
“Maria,” Watchman said. “She could have had it.”
“What?”
“My hypothesis this time. Suppose somebody was to plant the confession among Maria’s effects where some eager-beaver County Attorney could find it. She was using it to blackmail Kendrick, see, and that’ll also explain why Kendrick paid her all that money.”
“Kind of irregular, Trooper.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Not a one.”
“All right, where is it?”
“Not here. It’s in a safe deposit box in Phoenix. I’ll get it to you.”
“Get it to Victorio. I don’t want to lay eyes on it until it’s been discovered legally.”
“All right, I’ll do that. And I’ll get to Masterman first thing in the morning and tell him to start writing up the papers for an out-of-court settlement on a nine-to-one basis. If the tribe accepts it I’ll deliver Kendrick’s confession to Victorio.”
“There’s one other thing,” Watchman said. He was very tired now and it amazed him the sun was still shining in the window. It was only half-past three.
“Such as?”
“Joe Threepersons.”
“He’s your problem.”
“You’re the one he’s gunning for. You can help us with him.”
“How?”
“Bait, Mr. Rand.”
Rand thought it over. “I don’t like that much.”
“You owe him a lot more than that.”
“Let the son of a bitch sue me.”
“Come on,” Watchman whispered. “Come on.”
“Shit,” Rand said.
“Let’s go.”
In the office Kendrick sat as if a spring were coiled beneath him. Watchman said to Buck Stevens, “Locate Pete Porvo—he’s the local cop. Tell him to put Kendrick on ice until we come back for him.”
Kendrick said, “Wait a minute, you can’t—”
“Can it, Dwight,” Rand said, and the tone of his voice told Kendrick all he needed to know. Kendrick sagged but his eyes lay against Rand with an incredible force of hatred.
Victorio said, “I’d like to ask him some more questions.”
“I don’t need his answers,” Watchman said. “He’s sewed up. Come on, Tom. We’ve still got to catch Joe Threepersons before somebody gets killed.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEY WENT up to Rand’s ranch in two cars, the Bentley and Victorio’s Volkswagen; Watchman didn’t want Stevens’ cruiser to be seen there.
They parked in the driveway. Rand got out and looked past the house into the trees. In his consternation he turned a full circle, searching; the pressure of possibilities sucked sweat onto his forehead. He stood there for a moment like a floor lamp and then abruptly said, “Let’s go inside.”
Watchman trailed Stevens and Victorio inside after him. Rand closed the door and led the way into the back room. It was getting gloomy outside; the storm clouds were moving in—they’d just driven through it a few miles back. Rand reached for the desk lamp but then withdrew his hand from the switch and went to the drapes; he drew them shut and only then turned on the lights.
“All right. I’m supposed to be bait.”
“You,” Watchman said, “or somebody to double for you.”
“You mean somebody to play the part of the duck in Threepersons’ shooting gallery.”
“Yeah. He’ll come here with that magnum rifle. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. But he’ll be here.”
“And I’m supposed to wait around and get shot so you can arrest him afterward. That’s a hell of a brand of law enforcement you boys practice. I wouldn’t—”
“Nobody’s asking you to be the bait. Just give us the trap, we’ll provide the bait. Let us use some of your clothes.”
Rand’s square fingers were at war.
Watchman said, “Just keep away from windows. Now I could use one of those tailored jackets of yours and a pair of your sunglasses.”
Buck Stevens murmured, “You’d never pass, Sam. I’m about his build, better let me do it.”
Tom Victorio chewed his lip; Rand stared at Stevens and then withered a little, as if the reality of it were slowly reaching him.
“Sam, you know it’s got to be me,” Stevens said. “I won’t be a sitting duck for him. I’ll show myself but I’ll keep moving. It’s the only way to do it.”