As I drove, I thought back to the time when I’d taken my photography seriously. I’d enrolled in every course I could fit into
my college schedule and, later on, in others at the U.C. Extension campus in the city; I’d toiled in the darkroom for what
must have added up to years. And when I finally emerged for the last time from the chemical fumes and the glow of the safelight,
I’d been forced to admit that my efforts were merely competent. Competent, and somewhat trite.
After that disappointment I put the Nikkormat away for a while, then brought it out to use in my surveillances. But one day,
while photographing a kayaking insurance-company defrauder from a nearby sailboat, I realized that handling the camera still
gave me a great deal of pleasure. Now, freed from my self-imposed standards of excellence, I produced commercially processed
color photos that pleased me, and damned if they weren’t getting better and better. Soon the cracked walls of my front hallway
would be covered with enlargements, and they would eventually spill over onto the walls of my sitting room.
I reached a good vantage point, got out of the Land Rover, and set the camera on its hood. Removed the lens cap, adjusted
the f-stop and shutter speed. The light meter needle behaved strangely—probably it needed a new battery. I focused, studied
what was in the frame, then pressed the shutter.
That would be a good shot; sometimes you just could tell. But given the erratic behavior of the light meter, shouldn’t I take
one more? I altered the speed, thumbed the film-advance lever—
Something wrong here.
I pressed the shutter, thumbed the lever again. No resistance—slack, actually. As if there were no film in the camera …
I repeated the process, tried to rewind the film. Still slack. Picked up the camera and pressed the catch to open its back.
Empty. Someone had removed the film containing the shots I’d taken that morning at the bottle house.
When? I thought back to where the Nikkormat had been since I’d taken those pictures. Around my neck as I talked with Leon
Deck. Around my neck as I walked back to the Land Rover. Under the driver’s seat the rest of the time while I was inside the
hotel, the town hall, the library, and the Suds ‘n’ Duds.
Had I locked the Rover? Hard to say. Locking a car was a reflex action, conditioned by many years of city living. But the
failure to perform such actions often went unnoticed.
But who would have stolen my film? And why?
Impossible to say. Yet, anyway.
* * *
There was only one quick-service photo developer listed in the town directory, on Main Street not far from my hotel. The young
woman behind the counter confirmed that someone had brought in a partially exposed roll of 35-millimeter color film containing
pictures of Leon Deck’s bottle house that day, but when I asked for the customer’s name, she refused to give it. A five-dollar
bill undermined her business ethics considerably; the customer, she told me, was Mrs. Walker, who owned the Native American
Crafts Outlet. She’d brought the film in around eleven and had picked it up a little over an hour ago.
Prior to eleven I’d been in the hotel, and the Land Rover had been in the custody of valet parking.
* * *
“Sure, I let her into your Rover,” the parking attendant said sullenly. “Mr. McNear told me to.”
I whirled around, leaving him openmouthed in the fenced lot back of the hotel, and went inside to see his boss. At first the
desk clerk told me McNear wasn’t available, but when I said—loudly—that I wanted to talk with him about the theft of personal
property from my vehicle while it was in valet parking, he summoned the hotelier from his office. McNear looked nervously
at two other guests who were watching with interest, and ushered me into the room behind the reception desk.
Without offering me a chair he asked, “Now, Ms. McCone, what is this?”
“You tell me. I’ve already spoken with your parking attendant; he says you okayed letting Brenda Walker into my Land Rover.
She took a partly exposed roll of film from my camera.”
McNear turned away, looked out the window at the parking lot. “Why would she do that?”
“The film contained pictures of Leon Deck’s bottle house; I think she saw me taking them. But you know this.”
McNear’s posture had stiffened at my mention of Deck. “No, I don’t.”
“Then what excuse did Walker give you for wanting to get into my vehicle?”
He was silent for a moment, fingering the cord of the raised venetian blinds. “Did it ever occur to you that the attendant’s
lying?”
“Yes, but only for a moment. The kid doesn’t look dumb enough to try to shift the blame onto his boss.”
McNear sighed and faced me. “All right. Brenda suspected you’d been to the bottle house, and she wanted the film to confirm
that.”
“Bull. In order to know about the camera, she would have needed to see me using it out there.”
He shrugged. “All I know is what she told me.”
“I think you know a good bit more. Why did she have to confirm that I’d been there?”
“She was worried about Leon.”
“What’s he to her?”
McNear looked uncomfortable. “This won’t go any further?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“Well … Leon’s Brenda’s brother. Half brother, actually. You’ve seen him?”
I nodded.
“Then you know. He’s a badly damaged man. Came out here to be near her after many years in an institution back in the Midwest.
Brenda’s very protective of him.”
“Then why doesn’t she acknowledge him? Have him live with her?”
“Leon’s like a wild animal; he can’t be domesticated. He’s better off out there with his bottles and his strange dreams. As
for Brenda not acknowledging him”—he shrugged again—“I suppose she’s ashamed. Fancies herself a pillar of the community and
doesn’t want people to know she’s got a crazy ex-addict brother. But she looks out for him.”
I thought for a moment. It still didn’t explain why Walker had wanted my roll of film. She knew I’d been out there and talked
with Leon. So why take the film?
Unless there was something in that wash that she was afraid might show up in the photographs …
* * *
The crafts outlet was closed again. I barely slowed as I drove past it, just kept going and turned uphill toward Walker’s
house. No pickup in the yard there, no answer to my repeated knocks. I stepped off the porch and tried the strategy I’d earlier
used to locate Deputy Westerkamp: ask a neighbor.
“Brenda?” the pleasant-faced woman who was hanging wash on her line said. “Saw her a while ago loading her backpack and sleeping
bag into her pickup. She does that sometimes—just takes off into the desert for a few days. Says she’s an old desert rat at
heart.”
“Where would she go?”
The woman made a wide gesture with the hand that held a clothespin. “That’s a big desert out there, honey. Brenda never did
mention any one place.”
* * *
The door of the bottle house stood open. I climbed over the wall, calling Deck’s name.
No reply, just the creak of the door moving in a light breeze.
I stepped inside, allowed my eyes to get accustomed to the murky light. The room was empty, the oil lamp turned off. Deck’s
sleeping bag no longer lay across the tattered mattress.
Coincidence that he’d decided to take off at the same time as his half sister? Hardly.
On my way down the wash to the Land Rover, I studied the surrounding terrain, trying to see anything that would have made
my undeveloped photographs damaging to Deck or Walker. But it just looked like any other rain-and-flood-sculpted gully—wider
than most but essentially uninteresting and barren.
Nevertheless, I suspected it wasn’t nearly as uninteresting as it seemed.
* * *
The property room of the sheriff’s substation was a walk-in closet off Westerkamp’s office. The deputy went inside, thumped
around, cursed some, and emerged red-faced and dusty with a cardboard file box. He dumped its contents unceremoniously on
his desk.
Small blue travel bag with a United Airlines logo. Contents: three changes of underwear, two T-shirts, one pair of jeans,
two pair of socks, toiletries; two paperback westerns; half a six-pack of Coors, two packs of Winstons, unused book of matches
from a restaurant in Ely, Nevada; handful of tokens for free drinks from a casino in the same town, Triple-A road map of the
state, set of lockpicks. I held up one with a serpentine probe and looked questioningly at the deputy. He grinned and shrugged.
“No wallet or identification?” I asked.
“No.”
“Keys to the stolen van?”
“No keys. It was towed to the county impound lot.”
“No other keys?”
He shook his head.
“Was the personal property also wiped of prints?”
“There were a few partials. Not good enough to run through NCIC.”
“How’d he pay for his room?”
“Cash for the first two nights. For the other two, Aces was glad to carry him.”
“Not a class establishment, then.”
“They’re doing better now, thanks to your Mr. Gordon.”
I picked up the paperbacks, thumbed through them; nothing tucked inside. Set them down and began examining the inside of the
travel bag for hidden pockets. There weren’t any, but I felt something slender caught beneath the bottom lining. I worked
my fingers in there and pulled it free. It was a ballpoint pen; I looked at the printing on it: Keystone Steel Company, Monora,
PA.
I stared at the words. Silver against black. They seemed to shimmer.
“Nobody saw him leave town?” I asked Westerkamp.
“Uh-uh.”
“And the fugitive Walker saw on TV?”
“Was apprehended later on in South Carolina.”
“Figures.” I kept staring at the pen, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger.
“
I see things, you know
. … It is said that a thief in red will come to steal my secrets. … I am to guard against her. … I see the coyotes feeding
on the August man’s flesh and bones. …”
I looked up at Westerkamp: “
First word that comes to mind is ‘greedy’
. … Nasty town as well. … That desert out there’s been an unholy graveyard since the first vein of silver was uncovered. …
some of them fairly fresh. …”
“Ms. McCone, you all right?”
Not really. Problem here, a big one. I could be hurting the person I set out to help.
“Ms. McCone?”
“I’m okay.”
But I couldn’t keep what I suspected to myself; I’d never been one to circumvent the law in matters like this.
“Then what—”
“Deputy, I think I know where you can find your missing man.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“He’s somewhere in that wash where Leon Deck built his bottle house. In one of those unholy graves you were telling me about.”
“I hope you’re right about this,” Chuck Westerkamp said, watching two of his officers fan out along the wash in front of us.
He was obviously thinking about budgetary constraints and overtime. I, on the other hand, had been worried about him making
an illegal search of Leon Deck’s property until he informed me that Deck was merely squatting on county land.
“Hope you’re right,” he said again.
“I’m right.”
“Okay, this fellow comes out here from Pennsylvania looking to get revenge on Gordon for something that went on back there.
Would a person really go to all that trouble just because of bad business dealings?”
“We don’t know if his motive was business-related or personal. But, yes, I think in either case he would. Gordon calls the
Keystone turnaround ‘less than successful,’ but I’ve read the files, and taking into account the human factor, I call it a
disaster.”
“All right—he gets here and what happens?”
We’d been over this at the substation, but I sensed it comforted him to rehash it. If a body turned up in the wash, this promised
to be the biggest case of Westerkamp’s career; if one didn’t, he’d have to explain to his superiors why he’d pulled two men
off their regular duties on only the word of an out-of-state private investigator with a bizarre theory.
I said, “There was some sort of confrontation, and the August man, as Deck calls him, was killed.”
“By Gordon.”
“We don’t know that, either. It could have been Gordon”—God, how I hoped not!—“or one of his people or one of your townspeople
with a vested interest in the turnaround. But whoever killed him, Brenda Walker got involved in disposing of the body.”
“She probably thought she could confuse us with that tip about him being a fugitive; she thought we’d figure he’d skipped
out because she’d made him, and not look real thoroughly. But burying him near her crazy brother’s house? I’m not sure I buy
that part of it, not with a whole big desert out there, and Brenda knowing it better than most of us.”
“The farther the body was moved, the more risk was involved. With it here, she could keep an eye on the grave, make sure it
wasn’t disturbed.”
Westerkamp shrugged, and we began walking toward the house. So far neither of his men had covered much ground or come across
anything remotely resembling a grave. After a moment he said, “You don’t think Leon buried the body?”
“He might have, although I doubt she’d trust him with a task like that. More likely he saw it being buried or found it afterward.
The grave could have been disturbed by animals; he made that comment about the coyotes feeding on the August man’s flesh and
bones. But no matter how he knew, Brenda persuaded him to keep her secret. And last night after I went to her shop asking
about the Gordons, she hurried out here to warn him against telling me.”
“The thief in red.” Westerkamp tugged at Anna’s cape, which I’d put on against the late-afternoon chill.
“Right. There’s something that bothers me, though: before Walker left her house last night, she made a phone call, looked
fairly agitated while she was talking. To whom?”
“Well, if we find a body out here, we’ll subpoena the phone-company records.
If
we find a body.”
“We’ll find it.”