Death Qualified (18 page)

    "Wasn't going to call out the rescue team for another ten minutes or so," he said cheerfully.

    "It wasn't so bad."

    "You always sweat right through your jeans like that?"

    Her shirt was clinging to her back; her legs were sticking to the wet jeans; her hair was wet through.

    They started to walk slowly, and she was thinking that it was better to move, because once she stopped she might never want to move again.

    "Couple of questions," Frank said.

    "If someone was following Lucas aiming to shoot him, why didn't he do it before? Why wait until he got to that ledge? And he must have been following pretty close, or how did he know Lucas went down that way? So he must have been visible.

    And the next question is why did Lucas stop for sightseeing on his way home? He knew that ledge, nothing there to hold his interest."

    They walked in silence for several minutes until she asked, "When did you go down there?"

    "June. Wanted to see for myself, same as you."

    "Anyone go with you?"

    "Now, Bobby, no nagging, no checking up. Okay?"

    Alone, she thought with a tight feeling in her throat.

    She said nothing; no nagging for now. But soon they had to talk. Soon. She began to think of the coming days, a trip into Eugene to the library, to the newspaper morgue, to the university maybe. On Monday a trek over the mountain to meet Lucas Kendricks's parents, to quiz his father in particular. And to meet and quiz the sheriff. Busy day.

    But for now, she wanted to stretch out and not move. By afternoon, no doubt, she would feel like death, and on into tomorrow, but by Monday back to work, if she had to rent a wheelchair, or borrow one from Jessie. She made a slight face. She and Frank were going to Jessie and Doc's for dinner that evening.

    The drive over the mountains was pleasant early Monday morning, but the day was going to be hot. Barbara had thought she had been overheated from the strenuous climb on Friday, and that had been partly the reason, but also, a heat wave had rolled in from eastern Oregon, and Saturday and Sunday it intensified until the thermometer had climbed to ninety-five on Frank's terrace. Today was going to be even hotter.

    Frank drove slowly through the village of Sisters on the eastern slope of the mountain. The village had been done over in modern Americana tourist, he said drily, and didn't comment further except to point out the cafe where the two girls had met Lucas Kendricks, the grocery store where he had picked up camping food, and a sporting goods store where he had bought other camping gear, a propane stove, a water bottle, things like that. He sped up as soon as they left the village behind. Now the forests were open, airy pine forests with an occasional juniper tree, and undergrowth that became sparse as they traveled toward the high desert country. It was very dry; dust swirled in gusts created by traffic. Widely spaced sage brush plants were dusty and listless-looking.

    In the town of Bend, Frank drove straight to the county building where the sheriff's office was located. It seemed that minute by minute the air was becoming hotter and drier. Few people were on the streets, few in the building when they entered. A uniformed officer directed them to the office where the sheriff was waiting for them.

    "Ms. Holloway, Mr. Holloway? Timothy LeMans.

    Come in. Come on in," he said in a kindly way.

    "Too hot out here for anything." He was a tall, rectangular block of a man, as solid-looking as the mountains, with scant gray hair and a deeply sunburned complexion. He was dressed in cowboy clothes: embroidered shirt, dungarees, high boots, even a silver buckle on a wide, heavy belt. He held the door and they entered an air-conditioned suite of rooms where a couple of people were working at computers, others at typewriters.

    "In here," the sheriff said, holding another door open.

    This room was comfortably outfitted with upholstered furniture in tan slipcovers; the sheriff's desk was bare.

    Barbara glanced around, then stopped to look closer.

    On the walls were many pictures of the sheriff in a tuxedo, holding a viol; one was a group picture of a symphony orchestra. One of the pictures was of him and three others, two of them women, all in formal wear. It was labeled:

    Bach Festival, Eugene, Oregon, 1987.

    Although his eyes were twinkling when she turned to face him, he said nothing about the pictures but shook her hand in a firm, no-way-competitive grip.

    "Hate meeting people in the hall," he said, repeating his name.

    "There now, that makes it official." She could feel her tension oozing away before she was seated.

    Barbara glanced at her father, who was simply waiting.

    Her game. She said, "Sheriff, as I mentioned on the phone, we represent Nell Kendricks, and there are a lot of questions about what happened during the days before her husband turned up on her land."

    He was nodding.

    "First thing," he said, "guess it's only right to tell you I 'we known John and Amy Kendricks all my life, known their family, and their family's families, too. Doesn't make me altogether unbiased, you see. John and I have been friends for a long, long time."

    "I think that can only help," Barbara said.

    "Nell doesn't believe Lucas killed that girl."

    "Anything to go on besides that? Just what she thinks?"

    "I'm afraid not much. She said when she saw him he was too happy to have something like that on his mind.

    He was laughing."

    Sheriff LeMans had seated himself on the edge of his desk, one leg swinging; now he stood up and went to one of the walls with a roll-up map. He pulled it down.

    "I'll give you what we know," he said.

    "Lucas showed up at his dad's place Monday night, June fifth. Left Tuesday morning about eight-thirty." He pointed to a spot on the map south of Bend. His fingers were broad; they looked too thick to play an instrument of any sort.

    "He stopped for gas here in Bend, paid cash, and next thing he shows up in Sisters." He traced the road.

    "At twenty before ten he was buying camping gear including topo maps of the Sisters Wilderness, then the supermarket for food, and then he went to the cafe where he got coffee and a Danish."

    He took his hand away from the map and studied the floor for a second or two.

    "The girls were in the cafe before he showed up, laughing, giggling, being silly.

    There's pictures of the llamas on the cafe walls, and they were going on about them, didn't believe anyone out here had llamas, like that. Three, four people in the cafe were kidding around with them. The girls were from Austin, Texas, on their way to Alaska, hiking, hitching rides, going by bus, camping out, having themselves a real ball.

    That day they were going to go on into Eugene by bus, but it wasn't due in Sisters until late afternoon, so they had plenty of time. Anyway, in comes this guy that no one knows, and he says he's going to pass right by the Eagleton place if they want a ride out there. It's early enough to ride out there, look around, and then walk back to town, a couple of miles, in time to make their bus, and that's what they decide to do. No one gives much thought to it.

    He seems nice enough, and two girls, with one guy driving, all that. Besides Tyler Drury made a point of taking down the license number, and the guy just grins, like it's a big joke." He turned back to the map and pointed again.

    "That's the Eagleton place, and on the way there they got to talking and the guy told them he was going over the mountain, be on the other side by early afternoon, and one of the girls decides she'd rather do that than hang out in Sisters most of the day. The other one. Candy, wants to take pictures of the llamas. So they split. Candy was going to walk back to Sisters after she got the pictures, catch the bus later on, and be at a friend's house in Eugene that evening. The other one, Janet Moseley, left with the guy."

    The car, he went on, pointing as he traced its route, headed out one of the forest service roads, over a crushed red lava roadway, and made it all the way to the lava beds, probably went in a bit beyond the county line, and then had to come back out because the road had washed out.

    When they found the car it was headed back the way it had gone in, so Lucas must have turned around and at least started out that way.

    His voice went altogether flat then.

    "Whatever happened happened at the car. We found some of her clothes on the ground by it, a boot under the car, blood on the ground. She had a broken jaw, two teeth broken all the way out. Her neck was broken, and she had a deep gash on the side of her head. She got hit real hard, and fell real hard. Raped, sodomized, torn up pretty bad inside."

    He stopped and didn't continue this time until Frank said, "The news stories said she was mutilated."

    "I know what they said. I'll tell you the rest, but it's not for the papers. Agreed?" They both nodded.

    "Right.

    He, whoever it was, tied her hands together and dragged her by the rope over the lava bed to the other side where the mountain starts going down and tossed her in the creek over there."

    "Oh, dear God," Barbara whispered.

    "Was she still alive?"

    "Yes. Probably unconscious, maybe paralyzed from the broken neck. But she was alive and bleeding bad much of the way. Bleeding stopped finally, when she died, the medical examiner said, but she was cut up, lacerated, damn near skinned before she ever reached the creek."

    Suddenly the air-conditioned room was like a freezer.

    Barbara hugged her arms about herself.

    "I'll get us some coffee," Sheriff LeMans said, and strode from the room.

    Neither spoke again until he returned. The coffee was terrible, but it was hot. The sheriff watched Barbara shrewdly, and after she had swallowed a bit of the steaming coffee he said, "We know she was still alive at about one o'clock. She was taking pictures. Photographer here said the shadows were one o'clock shadows. Of course, he could have taken them, but her prints were on the cam era, no one else's."

    "But how did she end up in the McKenzie River?" Barbara asked.

    "That part's easy enough. In June all those creeks were high with runoff. And they all end up draining into the McKenzie on that side of the pass. Took a couple of days, but it was bound to happen sooner or later."

    "And Lucas? What next on him?"

    "Nothing definite. We put trackers to work on it and found where he probably camped each night. I say probably because all we can be sure of is that someone camped in those places during that time. Here's the first one."

    Again his thick, competent finger landed on the map, this time across the county line in Lane County.

    "How far is that?" Frank asked in surprise.

    "Too far to get in an afternoon?"

    Sheriff LeMans shrugged.

    "Depends on who you are and how much hiking you've done and how recently, and how well you know the country, and how much a rush you're in. Funny thing, though. When Lucas turned up dead, I called the medical examiner and asked a few questions and I don't think Lucas was in that good shape.

    Hard-worked hands, calluses, but not muscular like a hiker. And he was wearing work boots, not hiking boots.

    No traction, no support. His feet were badly blistered and infected. But there's not a sign of a camp before that one, and believe me, we looked."

    He pointed out the campsites for the next three nights, and then he went around his desk and sat down regarding them both with a sober expression.

    "Now, that's what I know, like I said. But there are some funny things, real funny things, going on. And I don't know what to make of them. First off, a guy comes in here and hires the same tracker we use to retrace the route Lucas must have taken. Pays good money, too much money. Just goes in and looks, takes pictures for a book he says he intends to write about the crime. So our guy thinks okay, nothing wrong with making a buck. But I got curious and I went back a week, two weeks after that, and every single campsite has been torn apart. Looks to us as if three or four guys went in there searching for something, and they hit every spot where he landed."

    "What about the car?" Barbara asked after a moment.

    Sheriff LeMans nodded.

    "Same thing. We kept it for the lab boys to go over and then released it to John. Nell, she said she didn't want it, to let him do whatever he wanted. So he and Amy came over and he drove it home.

    That night someone ripped it apart, took off upholstery, ripped up the floor boards, made a real mess. They did it very quietly, didn't make a sound. And," he said more slowly, "after that happened John told me that when he and Amy came home, after Lucas was killed, and they were up near Pendleton at the time, but when they got home the house had been ransacked. He hadn't mentioned it before because what was the point? They thought vandals, kids, dope heads something like that. Now he doesn't think so."

    Barbara felt there was too much to think about. She didn't even know what questions she wanted to ask yet. It didn't make any sense. None of it made any sense.

    "Who could have known the body would end up in the river, in the lake? He must have^ intended to hide it. But that's crazy because he knew someone had taken down his license number."

    "Not as crazy as it sounds," the sheriff said.

    "The license was stolen, and the battery. Both from a Corvette down in Colorado, a psychiatrists's car. She was in England at the time."

    Barbara shook her head. Battery? She let that go for the moment.

    "Of course, that water would have washed away a lot of evidence, semen, for example. But from what you say, rape was clearly evident?"

    "No mistake about that. But you're right, no semen, no blood."

    "What else then? The time of death? When was the time of death?"

    "The cold water makes that almost impossible. All we've got for sure are the pictures taken at one, and the fact that he made camp before dark and took at least eight hours to reach it. Ten's more like it, if you ask me, but that's opinion, not fact."

    She looked at him sharply, studied his broad face.

    "You don't think he did it?"

    "That's opinion, too," he said without hesitation.

    "Not the Lucas I used to know. Not dragging a girl over that lava like that. Not the sock in the jaw hard enough to break her neck, her jaw, and two teeth. He didn't have any marks on his hands, by the way, but he could have used a rock, or a branch, something. River washed away that kind of evidence, too."

    Barbara remembered all the accounts she had read of the murder and asked, "You haven't closed the case, have you?"

    "Nope."

    Unhappily she gazed at the map. The contour lines revealed the steepness of the terrain out there, and again she thought of Halleck Hill Road with no visibility more than a hundred feet.

    "How did anyone happen to find the car?

    Seems it could have stayed hidden for months."

    "Ranger spotted it." He put his long, square finger on the map again.

    "See here. Route 242, they call it the Scenic Route these days. Crookeder than a coon dog's hind leg. Anyway, here on the pass there's an observatory built out of lava, in the middle of the lava fields. From the building you can see Mt. Jefferson, Black Butte, the North Sister, Three Finger Jack.. .. There are slits in the walls with names so you know what you're looking at, but for folks from these parts, it's just a good place to stop for a bite to eat, coffee, and to have a look around. We mostly all do it, no matter how many times we've been up that way. So this ranger is going to stop up there and eat his lunch, have his coffee, and naturally he has his binoculars.

    He's taking a look around, and he spots something that's out of place. Right about here." He pointed south of the pass.

    "It's ten miles downhill, but a trick of the sun made it possible, I guess. Sun flashing off the chrome of a car in a place where a car shouldn't be. And by then, of course, everyone was on the lookout for the girl and the car. At first he thought the car was in trouble where the road washed last spring. So anyway he called in, and other guys closer to the spot went in and found it." He nodded at the map.

    "Used to be that road wound in and out of the lava beds and joined up with forest service roads or logging roads and you could make it all the way in to Eugene eventually. Guess you still can, but on foot these days."

    "Sheriff," Barbara said then, "thanks. You've been more than generous. I appreciate it."

    "I'd guess you won't want to call me as a witness," he said, and again a shrewd glint was in his eyes.

    "You'd guess right. At least at this point."

    "Well, when you called, I figured you'd want some of the stuff we've got together. Autopsy report on the girl, times, a map, things of that sort. I got it together in case."

    He pulled a large manila envelope from his desk and slid it across to her.

    "Is the name of the tracker in here?"

    He nodded.

    "And the psychiatrist in Colorado, the one whose plates he stole?"

    For the first time he was surprised.

    "Afraid not. But it's an easy name to remember. Brandy wine. Dr. Ruth Brandy wine."

    FOURTEEN

    the kendricks farm was nearly twenty miles out of Bend. As they drove, Barbara remembered spending a week out on the high desert in her elementary school days.

    A field trip to Malheur Preserve where shallow, salty lakes had been swarming with birds, egrets, whooping cranes, even pelicans; she could no longer remember all the different species, but at the time it had seemed miraculous to travel over the desert and find waterfowl by the thou sands. Today there was no sign of birds; the desert was dun-colored as far as she could see, dead-looking as far as she could see, and always ringed with the never-ending buttes and mountains. Wherever you are out here, she thought suddenly, you're in the middle of a ring of mountains.

    The roads were like systems of veins, the main trunk, a U.S. highway, then a state road, now a smaller one still, and from there they turned again onto a gravel driveway.

    And now the nerve center, she thought, when they came to a stop before the farm house. It was painted white, neatly maintained, and shaded with tired cottonwood trees that drooped in the heat.

    Amy Kendricks met them on the porch. She said hello to Frank and took Barbara's hand in both of hers and held it while she studied Barbara's face. She was a capable woman, Barbara thought, not fat, but strong with muscular arms and strong, firm hands. She was deeply sun burned; her hair was streaked with gray, cut short. As soon as her husband appeared, her suntan looked almost like pallor compared with his. He was like a tree trunk, brown, hard, deeply carved. He shook hands with Frank, said hello to Barbara, but did not offer her his hand.

    "Come in," Amy said then.

    "I made up some iced tea. It's cooler inside, but not very much."

    It felt a lot cooler at first. The house was dim; the blinds and drapes were closed against the glare and heat, and a large fan hummed on the floor. The overstaffed furniture was covered with pale green and tan cotton covers; it was a very comfortable room with books on tables, flowers in a vase, and everywhere pictures of the children, of Nell, of another couple with children, no doubt her daughter and family.. .. There was one of Nell and a man who must have been Lucas; Barbara looked at that picture with interest he looked as bland and innocent as a schoolboy.

    A pitcher of iced tea and glasses were on a tray on a coffee table. Amy began to pour; she looked at Frank.

    "Sugar, lemon?" Then, while she was adding a slice of lemon to his glass, she said, as if addressing the tea tray, "You should know, Ms. Holloway, Nell is relieved that you'll be helping out. And we think of Nell as our daughter. We love her like a daughter. Both of us."

    John Kendricks looked somewhat embarrassed, but he nodded.

    "We just want you to know," Amy went on, forgetting now to busy her hands with the tea things, "she has our complete support and confidence. We'll do anything at all that we can to help her and the children. Anything." She went back to pouring tea for them all, and apparently it demanded her complete concentration. She let her husband recount what happened the night that Lucas showed up.

    As it turned out, they were able to add little if anything to what Barbara and Frank already had heard from others.

    He had shown up exhausted, road dirty, unshaved. They already had had their dinner, but Amy fixed dinner for him while he showered and shaved. He kept his backpack with him and didn't seem to have anything except that. He had acted like a man on the run, spooked by a car in the driveway, jumpy as a jackrabbit.

    "About the pack," Barbara said, interrupting John.

    "What kind was it? Big, on a frame? What?"

    "Not one like hikers carry all their gear in for a week or two in the mountains, but bigger than a day pack." He held up his hands indicating midway between the two types.

    "Did you pick it up?"

    He shook his head.

    "Amy started to reach for it, and he was there quick as a flash, got it first. It wasn't filled to the top, not bulging like some you see. Can't say much more than that about it because I wasn't paying that much attention then. And we didn't pressure him to talk because we took it for granted that he'd be here for a couple of days, time enough to catch up the next day. He was too tired to talk Monday night. Nearly fell asleep before he was done eating. And Tuesday morning he took off again."

    He finished with a dull voice and looked at the water running dizzily down the side of the pitcher on the table.

    "And he didn't know about Carol?" Barbara asked.

    "How did you tell him?"

    Amy touched her husband's hand, and she said, "He went to the mantel, the pictures. And he said, who's the little girl. I thought he'd pass out when I told him it was his daughter."

    "Was that Monday night?"

    "Tuesday morning. I don't think he saw anything Mon day night. I thought, the way he acted, that he meant to go straight over there and see Nell, see his children. He said he had to leave right now, this minute, and not to say he'd been here if anyone asked. And I just assumed he meant to go home and see the daughter he never even knew he had." For the first time the hurt that Amy was carrying surfaced; she looked down swiftly, her eyes filling with tears.