Copp In Shock, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (22 page)

      
"I guess so. Have you heard about—?"

      
She did not give me a chance to mention that tragedy. "I heard all about it, yes. Everyone in town has heard about it. Hate to say this, Joe, but I'm afraid that all the sympathy has gone toward you."

      
"What does that mean?"

      
"Martha was not the most popular woman in this town, I'm afraid."

      
I did not know exactly how to respond. This had been the first negative comment I had ever heard concerning Martha. Maybe it set my nose just a bit because things began going downhill from that point. I asked her, "What are you getting at?"

      
"Nothing, I'm sorry. I had no right to... "

      
I said, "No, I need to hear it."

      
She gave me a long solemn look before she replied, "You'll have to get that from someone else. Especially now. I'm sorry. I just can't talk about Martha."

      
"Can you talk about Cindy Morgan?"

      
"No."

      
"You didn't mind talking about her last night or the first time we met."

      
"It was different then."

      
"How was it different, then?"

      
"You can get this stuff from anybody. Sorry. You won't get it from me. You're too damned defensive."

      
That was a surprise to me. I hadn't realized that I was being defensive. So what the hell was that all about? I said,
   
"You don't want to talk about Arthur Douglas either, do you?"

      
"No."

      
"Vicki Douglas?"

      
"Especially not her."

      
"She was found dead yesterday at Tahoe."

      
That shocked her. It took her a moment to reply, "That doesn't really surprise me. I'm sorry, but not surprised."

      
"Why not?"

      
"I guess I'm beyond surprise, after all the stuff that's happened around here."

      
I asked, "So nothing would surprise you?"

      
"Absolutely nothing," she replied soberly.

      
And obviously that was all she intended to say. We finished our coffee in an almost embarrassed silence.

      
After a moment she said quietly, "I have an early- morning call. Maybe you never sleep but I have to. So it's time to say goodnight. Last chance—would you like to stay?"

      
So what the hell had brought that sudden change to our warm rapport? Maybe she was just as tired as I was. I didn't know why, but I did know that it was over, at least for the moment. I said, "Thanks, but I really have to go."

      
There were secrets in this quiet town—dark secrets, it seemed. And maybe I would never plumb the full depths of that darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was past
four o'clock when I again traversed the business district of Mammoth and made my way on through town. The streets were deserted and there was an almost ghostly feel to the night. A fine rain had developed against a typical windblown night, slanting in from the western peaks, not enough to soak the streets but potentially treacherous enough to drive with caution.

I wondered what the hell I had hoped to accomplish at such an hour in this sleeping town. Even the police department seemed tucked in for the night, as well as the hospital. I had been crazy, I decided, to leave the warm company of my friend at the hotel, and I immediately regretted doing so. This was the witching hour and there were not even any witches about to liven the night.

So I drove over to Martha's condo in the hope that something would show up among her possessions to give me a better focus on the developments of this case.

Or so I thought.

The telephone was ringing as I went inside. It was obviously Lancer's voice in taut response, but he did not give his name as he said, "Thank God, I've been trying you every twenty minutes for hours.
 
Don't identify yourself.

Do you understand the meaning of electronic countermeasures ?"

      
"Spook stuff," I replied. "Sure. Are you telling me I need to check for that?"

      
"If you would, yes, please. Don't say anything else until you're sure it's clean."

      
Well, what the hell?—I didn't have any gear with me to check out stuff like that. Electronic surveillance is a very sophisticated business, the way it has evolved these days, but I tried the usual games to look for hidden bugs in the obvious places for a couple of minutes before reporting back, "Looks clean enough, but don't trust it to anything really important. What's going on?"

      
"Don't use any names."

      
"Gotcha, no names."

      
"A certain person desperately needs your counsel. Can you meet us?"

      
"Just tell me where."

      
"You remember our first meeting?"

      
"The very first?"

      
"Right. I'll be there for at least the next twenty minutes. Please come."

      
"I'll be there."

      
"Alone. My friend would be very nervous if anyone else came with you. So would I."

      
"I'd like to bring John with me."

      
"Especially not him."

      
I said quietly, "Gotcha. I'm on my way. Look for me."

      
"You can't miss me," he said, and hung up on that note.

      
Curiouser
and
curiouser
, yeah. Lancer's "friend" was

Janice Sanford, of course, and the first time I'd met Lancer was at the Mammoth airport. Why meet there? It had not been the safest harbor in the world the last time I'd seen that place.

But it was not my game, it was just my play.

And I had to assume that the guy knew why he needed to play it this way. But what did he know about Chief Terry that I did not? That was a worry, yeah... it was a worry.

The night had
worsened a bit in the airport area, the wind more blustery and the rain considerably heavier in spots. The higher peaks to the west were largely obscured by a fast-moving weather front and it seemed probable that those areas were encountering at least a dusting of snowfall. It was definitely raining here now, enough so that you would not wish to be caught in it without some protection.

I did not see Lancer or his car but a small team of mechanics were working on the Cessna jet inside a hangar. It seemed an odd hour to find these guys so involved, but what did I know? I supposed that it was logical enough to find them there, though, if Lancer was pushing the repair toward a quick conclusion. That could explain his request to meet him at the airport.

The chief mechanic greeted me in the open doorway of the hangar. "Can I help you, sir?"

I explained that I was meeting Lancer.

"Are you Mister
Copp
?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Could I see some I.D.?"

      
I showed him my driver's license. He inspected it with more than a perfunctory examination, smiled, then produced a sealed, handwritten letter from a back pocket of his uniform.

      
"He's not here?" I asked.

      
"No, sir."

      
"When did he leave the note?"

      
"About... oh, several hours ago."

      
"Several hours ago?"

      
"Yes, sir."

      
"He delivered it personally?"

      
"Yes, sir."

      
I thanked the mechanic and he went back to his work while I read the note from Lancer. This guy, I decided— speaking of Lancer—was playing it super cagey. I remembered that I had concluded that he had come from some kind of military background. So maybe the guy was just playing it overly cautious—and certainly there had been plenty of reason for that, but this was sounding like something from a spy novel.

      
The note from Lancer read, in bold, flowing script, "The South
Tufas
, any hour on the hour. Come alone or not at all."

      
I could not call this paranoia, not in view of all that had gone down over the past few days, but it did seem to be a bit more dramatic than necessary. What the hell, it was his life at stake and perhaps that of the woman he loved—so how could I fault it?

      
Problem was, I was having a bit of trouble deciphering it. The "
Tufas
" no doubt referred to the large, towering formations at Mono Lake, which is in the same general region where the two cops from L.A. had died just hours

earlier. The lake itself is approximately thirteen miles long by eight miles wide. The
tufa
towers dot the shoreline primarily along the west and south shores in an essentially wild, uninhabited area.

Mono Lake's landscape has been shaped over millions of years by volcanic activity that also produced many craters in and near the lake, and the
tufa
towers dramatically enhance the sense of its ancient past. The last of these craters erupted only six hundred years ago, and the numerous hot springs and steam vents in the Mono basin show us that volcanic activity is still present.

The
tufa
, or sinter, as it is sometimes called, is produced as a concretionary sediment of calcium carbonate. The unusual formations occur when calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through the alkaline lake water, which is rich in carbonates. Calcium and carbonate precipitate out as limestone. In time, a tower forms around the mouth of the underwater spring. The lake level has dramatically receded, exposing these ancient towers far above the water line.

The level of Mono Lake has dropped approximately forty feet and doubled its salinity in the past several decades. This is due to the city of Los Angeles, several hundred miles away, diverting the Sierra streams that feed the lake. It is perhaps worth noting that this has grown to be an increasingly unpopular diversion by local citizens and environmentalists alike.

Throughout the lake's long existence, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from the several mountain streams, and because it has no outlet, as the freshwater evaporates the salts are left behind. The lake is now about two and a half times as salty and eighty times as alkaline as seawater.

Though called a "dead sea" by some, it abounds with life, and the lake is ecologically vital to several important species, which take much of their sustenance from the food chain originating in the lake—green algae, brine shrimp, and the brine fly. An estimated four trillion shrimp commonly swim in
Mono's
water. They are thought to belong to a unique species that has particularly adapted to the special conditions there. The shrimp and flies provide food for more than eighty species of migratory birds, many of which nest at the lake.

Of course my earlier characterization of this lake as a "moonscape" refers only to my impression of the strange landscape features and the eerie quality of the surroundings. One could even imagine such a time during the youth of our Moon when it could have looked exactly this way, had life been present there.

I was not looking forward to another run up the highway in this steadily worsening weather, and certainly I had no desire to invade unfamiliar territory at such a time. I was feeling a bit cranky, too, over Lancer's theatrics, which seemed to be creating an unnecessary problem. But I also could not abandon the guy and especially not Janice Sanford's problems, real or imagined.

I was a bit testy, too, over Lancer's desire to exclude John Terry's participation. Not that I was feeling particularly uneasy about the meeting but because I felt like a "stranger in a strange land" and I would have preferred to have the assistance of an expert guide. But let me lay it out level; I was aggravated, really, because Lancer seemed to be impugning Terry's reliability and I had bought this cop all the way. Not that I had accepted the Chief unquestionably all the way, but I had not really been that ambivalent about the man and I guess I saw Lancer's comment as theatrics rather than caution.

Also, of course, let's be realistic about this, I would not be much of a cop if I had not been aware throughout this experience that my life was in jeopardy, and perhaps extreme jeopardy. If I was going to be blindly skulking about on a stormy night, I would have felt a lot more comfortable with John Terry backing me up instead of Tom Lancer. Lancer had shown himself to be a ready enough man with a gun but I sure as hell would have preferred the demonstrated expertise of John Terry if the need arose.

Almost as though to echo my own dark thoughts, as I left the airport I noticed a car parked beside the road just above the point where the airport proper joins the Owens River Road, which is where I had intercepted one of the gunmen following the attack on the plane. The rain was beginning to pelt down and my visibility was not that sharp, but I thought on reflection moments later that I recognized that vehicle.

It looked, I decided in afterthought, very much like one of the cars used by the Mammoth police.

Sure, I had just been complaining that I would have liked to have Terry along for the ride. But not, I think, this way.

The lousy suspicions surfacing inside of me were all I needed to make my night complete.

As I peeled out onto Highway 395 and began the run north toward Mono Lake, I was positive that I saw that same car slip discreetly behind me.

So okay. The more the merrier.