Prophet (24 page)

John stopped short. “All right . . . All right . . . Walk me through it. How did they do it?”

Max didn’t shy away from the question. He was quite sure of himself. “First they killed him, probably beat him to death, and then they
dumped the pipe rack on him to make it look like the pipes smashed him.”

John shook his head. “Max, those racks weigh tons. You don’t just dump them over.”

Max got loud. “What you mean, you don’t just dump ’em over? The pipe rack dumped over, didn’t it? Or didn’t you notice that little detail?”

Deanne put her hand on him to calm him down.

John tried to answer quietly. “They figure it could have been metal fatigue.”

Max shook his head. “Man, you talkin’ to a welder. I know steel—I know good welds and bad welds. That rack was fine.”

“How do you know?”

“I been in your dad’s warehouse. I’ve seen it.”

“Well . . . the rack could have been out of balance too. A killer couldn’t just dump the rack over.”

Max looked insulted. “John, ain’t you never heard of a forklift?”

THE NEXT MORNING
John was at the warehouse. The stand-in manager was doing well and was considering accepting a permanent full-time position. The customers were still coming through at a steady rate. Jill the bookkeeper was back on the job and was almost her bubbly self again. Buddy and Jimmie were optimistic.

Okay, good enough. Now to talk to Chuck Keitzman, the warehouseman—and forklift operator—who found Dad under the pipes that fatal morning. He was hard at work in the warehouse, rearranging wooden boxes of ABS fittings.

“Hey, Chuck!”

“Hey, Johnny! How’s it going?” Chuck looked better. One hand was still in a cast, but he was doing well enough with the other hand just tossing parts from one box to another. They engaged in shop talk for a little while. Yeah, Chuck was doing all right, but was anxious to heal up so he could do the heavy loading again. He and Jimmie had switched jobs much more often, which Jimmie didn’t mind, but Chuck didn’t like working at the counter—he couldn’t put up with pushy customers.

John approached the key subject casually. “Say, do you know Max Brewer?”

“Sure. He was a friend of your dad’s. Didn’t know him real well, but he’s been around a few times. He came over a few days after John died, just to look around. A lot of John’s friends have done that.”

“Well . . . Max has come up with a theory about how Dad may have died, how the pipe rack may have fallen. Remember when you used the forklift to try to get the pipes off Dad?”

Chuck grew quiet and somber at the memory of it. “Yeah.”

“Was the forklift already warm when you started it up?”

Chuck thought for a moment and then recalled, “Yeah. Yeah, it was. I choked it, but then I didn’t need to because it was ready, it wanted to start. I figured John had been using it.”

“How about exhaust in the air? You know how that thing stinks the air up in here.”

“Well . . .” On that, Chuck couldn’t be sure. “You just don’t notice that after a while.”

“Yeah, right. Well, say, whatever happened to that pipe rack?”

“We tore it apart.”

Oh-oh. “You tore it apart?”

“Yeah, the cops were through with it, and it wasn’t any good anymore, and we sure didn’t need the thing in here to remind us.”

“What did you do with the pieces?”

“I think they’re still out in the yard, out by the ADS coils.”

They went out to the loading dock, hopped down to the ground, and crossed the gravel yard to the ADS pipe—large, plastic, corrugated pipe stored in coils that resembled stacks of monstrous black earthworms. Next to one stack of ADS, in several mangled lengths, lay the remains of the fallen pipe rack.

John looked carefully through the pile. “Okay, Chuck, can you tell me which of these long pieces were on the bottom?”

“Brother, I don’t know.”

“Well, give it a shot.”

They picked through the pile, sorting them a bit. The short girders were crosspieces, the long rods with the turnbuckles were diagonal braces. The smaller L-shaped pieces were built to hold shelving. All these were put aside. That left four main rails that spanned the length
of the rack. They were heavy, L-shaped, and very much alike.

“Okay, Chuck, here’s what I’m looking for: I want to see if any of these rails got bent or marred or scratched in a way that would show the forklift was used to dump the rack over.”

Chuck stared at him a moment. “Are you kidding?”

“Is what I said possible?”

Chuck gave it serious thought. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s possible.”

“The forklift could’ve gotten in on the other side of the rack, gotten the tines under it, and tipped it over?”

Chuck was getting disturbed at the prospect. “You really think somebody
killed
John?”

“I don’t know. But let’s check these rails.”

The first rail was twisted on the ends, but the fall did that. The second rail was obviously a top rail the way the bolts were anchored, and it matched the first, so they were the top rails. The third rail . . .

“Hang on,” said John. “What about the fourth one? Does it have a bend in the middle like this one?”

They checked the fourth rail. It was straight. They looked carefully at the bottom surface of the third rail. It had a definite upward bend in the middle, with paint scratched away in two key places.

“Let’s get this over on the dock.” Each man took one end of the rail, and they hurried back to the loading dock. They set the rail on the dock and hopped on up. Then Chuck ran into the warehouse. In just moments the old forklift came chugging out into the daylight, and John knelt low by the paint scratches to have a good look as Chuck eased the forklift closer.

The tines of the forklift eased up to the bend and the scratches. The left tine touched one scratch; the right tine came close.

Chuck leaped from the machine for a look. “What do you think?” John asked.

Chuck took hold of the right tine and gave it a light yank.

The tine lined up with the scratch. It was a perfect match.

Chuck let out a quiet, long, salty phrase of amazement.

“I’ll call the police,” said John.

CHAPTER 11

BOB HENDERSON WAS
good-looking, a little heavy but trying to lose weight, had a wife and three boys he loved, coached Little League baseball, and went to church every Sunday. He dressed neatly, didn’t smoke, didn’t mutter or talk fast. In other words, he wasn’t what one would expect a homicide detective to be. One attribute did fit the stereotype: he’d grown so used to the job that nothing seemed to excite him.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the long, bent steel rail. “Could be.”

Henderson, John, and Chuck Keitzman the warehouseman were standing on the loading dock at the warehouse, looking over John and Chuck’s discovery.

Henderson took another close look at the bends in the rail the forklift made—or could have made. “How many people have operated the forklift since the morning of the accident? We’ll call it an accident for now, if that’s okay.”

Chuck knew where this was leading and had already had the realization. “Myself, Jimmie, maybe Buddy.”

Henderson stood up. “So in other words it’s been used regularly ever since the accident.”

Chuck was sad to report, “Yep.”

“And I suppose you drove it out here to match it to the bends in the rail?”

That was the most painful to admit, for both John and Chuck. Chuck answered, “Yep.”

“Well, we’ll fingerprint it anyway, but I doubt we’ll find anything. Eh, that’s tough. If we knew then what we know now . . .”

John asked, “What about the autopsy report? Weren’t there injuries that didn’t quite fit what the accident would have caused?”

“We’ll check it again. But I recall the findings being inconclusive. Your dad was . . . well, pardon me, but it would have been hard to tell. Was anything missing from the warehouse after the accident? I’m looking for a motive here.”

Chuck shook his head. “Nothing disturbed that we could find, and we usually keep a tight control on the inventory.”

“No cash taken?”

“The cash box was safe and sound.”

“So, how about enemies? Help me out. Who’d want to kill a nice old plumbing wholesaler, and why?”

“Well . . .” said John. “He wasn’t just a plumbing wholesaler. He was also an outspoken . . . uh . . . religious person.”

“What kind of religion?”

“Uh . . . Christian . . . Fundamentalist. He was active in the pro-life movement, and I think he may have made some enemies in the pro-choice camp.”

Hoo boy. That did sound dumb, and Henderson’s expression reflected that. “Is that so unusual?”

“Well . . .” John finally shook his head. “I admit it’s pretty flimsy.”

“Yeah, it’s flimsy.” Henderson looked at his watch. “Well, okay . . . I’ll reopen the case. But do some homework for me, okay? Do some thinking, some remembering, ask around, find out if anybody might know something that would shed some more light on this. Right now we don’t have a suspect, we don’t have a clue about who the suspect might be, we don’t have a motive, we don’t have much of anything. Show me the way. Give me something to hang my hat on, I don’t care what it is. I gotta go.”

“Well, thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t touch the forklift. I’ll get somebody out here.”

With that he was gone, and somehow John felt ignored, passed
by . . .

. . . NEGLECTED . . . ABANDONED.
Even as he sat at his computer that afternoon, editing for the Five Thirty, he couldn’t help brooding about it all, turning it over and over in his mind. Was this how Rachel Franklin the waitress must have felt?

“John?”

It was Tina Lewis, of all people. “Yeah, Tina. What’s up?”

Tina grabbed a chair and settled into a fashionable pose. “John, the subject of your father came up at the 9 o’clock meeting, and I felt I should talk to you about it.”

You, of all people?
John thought. He could feel himself bristling. “What about my father?”

Tina was displaying a rather gentle demeanor at the moment. It was jarringly uncharacteristic. “Well, we all know it’s been difficult for you, and of course the choices we made in covering the governor’s rally were . . . Well, they were not good choices. I admit that. I’m sorry.”

John remained cordial, but he didn’t believe a word she was saying, and he had no trouble with that at all. “Okay.”

“Well anyway, the subject did come up about your father’s death and whether we should do anything on that. It is an old story by now. We’d be a little late if we covered it, and there really isn’t much to show. We have no video of the accident, no shots of the police or aid unit or fire department, nothing to put the viewer on the scene.”

“No, you don’t.”

“But the bottom line is, we really agreed that we had to consider your feelings. We didn’t want you to feel your father’s death was unimportant to us, that we were just ignoring it. But at the same time we were concerned about dredging up matters that were best left alone and could cause you embarrassment.”

“I appreciate that,” he lied.

“But let me ask you something . . .” Oh-oh. John had a feeling she was getting around to the real reason for this conversation.

“Have there been any more developments in your father’s death? Any investigations by the police, anything that might make it newsworthy? Because if it’s important to you, we want to air it.”

Don’t tell her.
The thought shouted clearly and emphatically in John’s head.
Don’t tell her.

“Well, uh . . . Tina . . .” John looked at his computer screen and away from her just to get his mind clear, then faced her again. “I can’t think of anything newsworthy, that’s for sure. Dad’s dead and gone, and I think most of the excitement is over.”

“Mm-hm.” She nodded, and her expression dripped compassion and understanding. “Well, if anything arises and you want to tell me about it, please don’t hesitate.”

Pain. Cunning. Both together in the same person at the same time. She was like a cornered, wounded animal.

“Well, thank you,” was all John could say, and he tried not to stare.

She rose, put the chair back in its place, and floated toward her office. John just looked at the floor, trying to process what had happened, what he suddenly knew about Tina Lewis. What do you do with a cornered, wounded animal? Try to help, or run from the danger?