Whisper Death (5 page)

“No,” she replied solemnly. “Not him. Watch Ralph. Take care of him for me.”

McGuire had looked at her in disbelief. He waited for an explanation, a laugh perhaps. But there had been none.

Take care of him for me. Protect the man I choose to sleep with on occasion. Pretend that you and I never felt anything, that we never huddled together and watched the Caribbean dawn arrive like a silent explosion above the sea. Be cool, be distant, be detached. He promised himself he would try.

It seemed like the noble thing to do. He wasn't familiar with noble motives. Not where his personal life was concerned. Perhaps it was time to begin.

Ralph Innes arrived at the airport the next morning only moments before departure time, looking unkempt and hung over. He grunted at McGuire and avoided any unnecessary conversation. On the first leg of the flight to Palm Springs, Innes slept while McGuire scanned the Boston newspapers, feeling the tension build between himself and the younger man.

During a stopover in Dallas, Innes purchased a cheap paperback adventure novel and immersed himself in it with the silent animosity of a traveller stranded in a place he despised.

When they were aloft again, McGuire read a news magazine, played an old policeman's game of assigning potential criminal backgrounds to the passengers around him, and stared out the window at the neat and orderly landscape passing six miles below.

“He's a strange critter. No doubt about it. Kind of guy you want to see fitted for a tailor-made straitjacket, know what I mean?”

Palm Springs Police Captain Richard Bonnar walked behind his desk and gestured for his visitors to sit down.

McGuire and Innes seated themselves in matching teak chairs and scanned Bonnar's office. The walls were finished in panels of darkly stained wood set between strips of polished chrome. Several large tropical plants thrived in expensive Oriental ceramic pots near a window which opened on an enclosed and landscaped inner courtyard.

It was a room more suited, in McGuire's opinion, to a lawyer or corporate executive than a captain of detectives. But then, this was Palm Springs, McGuire reminded himself. The mayor is a former nightclub entertainer and the streets carry names of has-been movie stars and golfing ex-presidents.

“How about a lemonade?” Bonnar was standing at the teak sideboard holding a stainless-steel carafe in one hand, a crystal tumbler in the other. McGuire and Innes shook their heads silently. Bonnar filled a glass deftly as he spoke. “Anyway, this Crawford character is more likely to wind up in a mental hospital than a jail when you get him back there. Way I see it.”

He sipped the drink and returned to his desk, speaking as he walked. “I'm not tryin' to influence your handlin' of the case, you understand. But if we were to keep him here for charges, I expect a mental examination would reveal him unfit for trial.” He sat in his large tangerine-coloured chair. “And from what I've read about his problems back east, it all seems to fit the pattern.”

Bonnar looked from one man to the other through gold-framed glasses. He carried himself with the assurance of someone who met every social occasion, high and low, with confidence. Dense, curly salt-and-pepper hair capped a strong face with straight nose, dark eyes, heavy brows, full lips and square chin. It was a face appropriate for either a captain of industry or a man astride a horse on an open range, herding cattle with his back to the wind.

“Tell us what happened the night he was arrested here,” McGuire asked.

Ralph Innes folded his arms across his chest and stared through the glass wall at the landscaped courtyard.

“It's all in the report.” Bonnar gestured at the file folder on his desk.

“So let's hear what's
not
in the report,” McGuire said. He smiled as he spoke; it was a universal shorthand between police officers. The report tells me the facts, the request said. Now tell me the truth.

Bonnar nodded and raised his amber-coloured embroidered cowboy boots to a corner of his desk, resting them on a sheaf of papers and straightening the crease in his sand-coloured slacks.

“First thing, we thought it was somebody who'd partied too much,” Bonnar began. His voice carried the soft inflection of a Tennessee country boy. Consonants were slurred, “g”s went astray at the ends of words, and each sentence was spoken with a subtle musicality, a melodic rising and falling in pitch.

Bonnar explained that Crawford had been found in Las Palmas, an older enclave favoured by Hollywood stars when they first began fleeing Los Angeles to the desert air of Palm Springs on weekend escapes in the 1930s. He recited the names of former Las Palmas residents. Alan Ladd. Randolph Scott. Greta Garbo. Peter Lawford. Elvis Presley. Howard Hughes. Ronald Reagan. “Nat King Cole, too,” he added. “No prejudice in Las Palmas. Not against skin colour, I mean. Only barrier to living there was money.”

But Las Palmas was yesterday's address. Although some Hollywood celebrities still resided there, most preferred villas further south in the Coachella Valley communities of Rancho Mirage or Palm Desert. There, in multi-million-dollar homes enclosed by high fences and protected by security gates, they enjoyed the convenience of golf fairways just beyond their patios and the atmosphere of country club gaiety where everyone had status and no one was uninvited.

The most prosperous of all chose home sites atop the foothills of the San Jacinto mountains forming the western boundary of the valley. Through triple-glazed and bronze-tinted picture windows, this most elite strata of Palm Springs society looked down from the mountaintops across the entire Coachella Valley sprawling in the sun.

“People in Las Palmas are concerned about their security, you understand,” Bonnar explained. “Everybody in the valley is. See, once you acquire this kind of affluence, well then, you can afford to spend a wagonload of money protectin' it.” Bonnar drained his glass of lemonade. Voices passed in the corridor beyond the office, reminding McGuire that he was in a police captain's office and not discussing investment opportunities with a financial counsellor.

“Most people in Las Palmas, they put up heavy iron gates and fences around their villas.” Bonnar held his empty tumbler to the light and turned it slowly in his hand. “And they all have security systems. Somebody trips the alarm, it rings here and at security service offices all up and down Palm Canyon Drive. So they get themselves two kinds of armed response, public and private.” He frowned at the glass. “My nightmare is that one time we're liable to have two gangs takin' pot-shots at each other and they'll both be good guys.”

“These people over there, in this Las Palmas area, they all celebrities?” It was the first comment Ralph Innes had made since settling in his chair.

Bonnar swivelled in Ralph's direction. “Not any more. Most of them are folks who finally made enough money in Los Angeles to come out here and join the big boys.” He smiled tightly, the smile of a host greeting unfamiliar guests. “And some movie people who work behind the scenes. Producers, directors, writers, agents. I tell you, some of them have more money than the big-name stars.”

He talks like a public relations man, not like a homicide detective, McGuire reflected. He wondered if the soft Tennessee drawl was genuine or a good ol' boy affectation, part of a pre-packaged image. “Whose house was Crawford shooting at?” McGuire asked.

“A couple of 'em. There's a short dead-end street at the end of Vista Chino, it runs right through Las Palmas. This little bitty street is called Via Linda, only has three houses on it. We found him there in the middle of the road with a couple of private security guards sittin' on him.” Bonnar shrugged and flashed his broadest smile, displaying white and evenly spaced teeth. “That was one time when their good guys beat our good guys.”

One of the home owners on Via Linda, Bonnar explained, had called the security service to report a man screaming obscenities and firing a gun. By the time the first security force arrived, Crawford had emptied his revolver and thrown it through a window into the living room of one of the Via Linda houses.

“When we got him settled here, he went quiet,” Bonnar added. “Wouldn't say a word to anybody. Not even his lawyer, who filed the usual appeal against extradition. Then, when they lost that one, ol' Crawford told his lawyer he wanted to go back to Massachusetts. We said we'd drop charges against him here if he'd do just that. Kind of gettin' him out of our hair and into yours.” Another tight smile. “He bit at that one pretty quick.”

While Bonnar talked, McGuire scanned the contents of Bonnar's file folder on Crawford, turning pages of arrest reports, citizen complaints, court records and other documents. “Was he drunk?” McGuire asked without looking up.

“No evidence of it,” Bonnar replied. “No drug abuse either. None we could find, anyway. And that kind of surprised me. He was actin' like some of the people we used to see from further down the valley, come up here full of hell and overdosed on Angel Dust or amphetamines.”

“Why just one security call?” McGuire asked. “He's in the middle of the street firing his gun all over. Why didn't more people report it?”

“One family was away. Only the Mexican maid was there. We have no proof, of course, but she's probably in this country illegally. The last thing she wants is to answer questions from a Palm Springs cop. That's if she can speak any English at all.”

“How about the other two houses?”

“One is a guy from Los Angeles, ran a business back there, somethin' to do with health insurance. His name's in the file, Donald Mercer. Nice fellow. Met him once or twice, social things and all. He alerted his security.”

“The third house?”

“That's owned by a woman named Vargas. She just moved here last year.” There was a fleeting change in Bonnar's expression, like a breeze passing over still water. “She's become prominent on the Palm Springs cultural scene. Quite a woman.”

“Was she home?”

Bonnar nodded. “Said she heard nothin' until Crawford tossed his gun through her window.”

“Why was he there, on that particular street?” McGuire asked.

“No idea. He won't talk to us.”

“He just picked this one dead-end street at random?”

“That appears to be the situation.” Bonnar stretched his arms above his head and spoke through a long, lazy yawn. “We found his car a few blocks away. He'd rented it in Las Vegas, day before.”

McGuire stared out at the enclosed courtyard beyond the massive window. “He flies to Las Vegas, rents a car, shows up here and starts firing a thirty-eight at everything in sight.” McGuire spread his hands in front of him. “Why?”

Bonnar laughed and stood, extending his lean frame to its full height. “Won't tell us, but he might tell you. Let's go see him.” He led the way out of his office, McGuire following closely behind, Innes several paces to the rear.

McGuire couldn't imagine a sharper contrast in architecture than the granite mausoleum lines of Boston Police Headquarters and the airy openness of its Palm Springs counterpart. One was cold and vertical, the other warm and horizontal. Where tarnished brass and cracked marble dominated in Boston, open-grain wood and natural fabrics set the tone in Palm Springs.

Beyond the office area, the three men entered a foyer with wide stairs leading down to the basement lock-up area. At the bottom of the stairs, Bonnar led the way into an interrogation room where a large two-way mirror provided a view from an adjoining observation area. A microphone was installed in the centre of a large, round wooden table to record conversations, and the oversized clock on the wall would be included in videotaped scenes as protection against editing.

Bonnar showed McGuire and Innes the coffee machine just outside the door and left to retrieve Crawford from his cell.

“I could handle police work in a place like this,” McGuire said, when he had settled in a chair at the interrogation table.

Ralph Innes grunted, crossed his legs and stared into a far corner.

“Ralph, what's chewing your ass anyway?” McGuire demanded.

Innes turned his head slowly and looked at McGuire as though he were a stranger. “You didn't have to come back, Joe,” he said. There was no anger in his voice. Only sadness.

“Well, it's too late now,” McGuire said with annoyance. “I'm back and that's that. Relax, damn it. I'm just putting in time. I'm not interested in screwing your career.”

The other man closed his eyes for a moment and let a small smile pull at the corners of his mouth. “It's not my career I'm worried about,” he said.

And McGuire knew. He had known it from the expression on Ralph's face that morning at the airport in Boston.

“I didn't come back for Janet either,” he said. “So get that out of your head. We had something once and now it's over.”

Innes continued to look at him, the smile fixed. You're lying, the expression said.

The door behind McGuire opened and two Palm Springs officers entered the room, dressed in the starched khaki uniforms favoured by southern police forces that always reminded McGuire of Boy Scout troops. Each was holding tightly to one of Bunker Crawford's arms.

Crawford was taller than McGuire had expected, but even so he looked like a shrunken man. His skin hung loosely in folds from his face and he had less hair than in the police photograph. His eyes were dull and avoided those of the others; they moved, unhurried, from object to object, alighting on the microphone, the clock, the table, an empty corner, never connecting with another face. One of Crawford's hands shook as though it were palsied.

“You guys okay in here?” Bonnar leaned through the open doorway behind Crawford and the two young police officers, still gripping their prisoner by his upper arms.

McGuire nodded. “Take the cuffs off him,” he instructed. When Crawford was free, McGuire motioned him to sit down and nodded to the two officers, who stepped quietly into the corridor.

A small red light beneath the clock glowed, and McGuire knew someone was in the room beyond the two-way mirror, taping the proceedings.

“Bunker, can I get you a coffee?” McGuire offered.

Crawford shook his head and examined his fingernails.

“Are they treating you all right here?”

A slight nod.

“Bunker, we're from the Boston Police Department,” McGuire said. He spoke gently. Crawford looked pathetic, his mouth hanging slackly open, his face unshaven. “My name is McGuire, and that's Sergeant Innes behind you. You don't have to talk to us without your lawyer present, but we would like to ask you a few questions. . . .”