Final Notice (23 page)

Al flashed me his version of a smile and I stared at the floor. What Kate had objected to was standard police practice. Dragging suspects in off the street and subjecting them to forty or fifty hours of grilling under hot lights was all in a day's work.

"Who the hell is this woman anyway?" DeVries thundered. "Aren't you the little lady who was going to karate the Ripper into submission?"

Kate's face turned red and she clenched her fists.

"Take it easy," I said quickly. "Everybody."

"What's she doing here anyway?" DeVries said. "She doesn't need to be in on this case anymore."

"She's here, George," I said, "because she deserves to be. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't know that the Ripper killed Twyla. Without Kate, we wouldn't have a case at all."

He mumbled something under his breath about women and the best place for them. And Kate mumbled something about what he could do with himself when he found the time. Then both of them curled up in their chairs and stared daggers at each other while Al and I continued to talk.

"We didn't really search the house, Harry," he said, plucking a fresh Tareyton from his coat. "Just the once over and a talk with the mother and with Jake. It might not be a bad idea to take another look, if we can get the kid out of the house for a time so he doesn't doctor things up or get in the way."

"That might not be so easy," I said. "He seems to hang around the house a lot. Does anybody have an idea of what he does for a living?"

Al pulled a notepad from his desk drawer. "He was a student at D.A.A. for awhile. Or so his mother says. Right now he's `looking for suitable employment."'

"D.A.A.?" DeVries said suddenly. "That's the University art school, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Well that's probably how Hack first spotted Twyla," he said. "A lot of those art students hang around together. And since he and Jake were such close buddies, he might have spotted her at a meeting or a get-together that they had."

It was a reasonable guess. Hack could have begun following her after that. Watched her in the library. Cut up the books. And then ...

"We've got to get  Jake out of that house," I said. "We've' got to get him to lead us to Hack. Now how the hell are we going to do that?"

Nobody had a decent suggestion until Cal Levy walked into' the room in his calf-skin boots and his Stetson, with his silver-: plated .45 on his hip.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, swiping the hat off his head andshaking rainwater off the brim. "It's plumb nasty out there. And then I had a D&D to look after." He glanced at the room. "Mighty crowded in here, ain't it?"

"That isn't the half of it," DeVries said.

A1 and I filled him in on the situation. He listened attentively, as if he expected to be quizzed on the details when we were done. Then he hooked his thumbs in his belt and saidi "I think I might be able to help."

"Go on," A1 said.

"Well, it's like this. We've been following up on this drug, thing that Harry unearthed out in Dent. See, it struck me at kind of strange that Norris Reaves was so damn certain that Haskell'd spill the beans if we got our hands on him. Made me think he might know a good deal more about Hack than he was saying. Old Norris ain't too bright. But you'd be surprised how smart a man can get when his life's at stake. Hearing about what happened to Effie didn't shake him up none. Said he'd expected it, -ever since she began hanging around with Hack. He knew that Lord was going to be the death of her one way or another. But she just wouldn't listen to reason. What finally got him talking was the prospect of fifteen years to life for attempted murder and drug trafficking. Now that really touched him where he lived. I had a long chat with him this morning and when I let it be known that I might do some, dickering -maybe knock the attempted murder charge down to assault, if he told me what he knew about Hack -he got real cooperative. Hack was in a bad way last time Norris sees him. Strung out and mean and 'bout half-starved, I guess, from the speed. He didn't know for sure where Hack had gone after Effie give him the boot. But he said there was an old farmhouse out in Milford that Hack used to talk about when he was stoned. It was a place him and his brother used to go to when they wanted to get away from their mother. That is, before Hack met Effie. Norris thinks Hack might be hiding out there."

"Where- in Milford?" I said.

Cal Levy shook his head. "Don't know. And I'll tell you  the truth, I ain't even sure Milford is right. Prospect of a jail cell can make an unimaginative man downright fanciful."

"Well, it's something," Al Foster said. "Now what are we going to do with it?"

"Feed it to Jake," I said. "And see what happens."

"And what makes you think anything will happen?" Kate said.

"A little old lady named Andrea Gibson," I said. "And a theory she has about black sheep."

At six that night we assembled at the library -Al Foster, Cal Levy, George DeVries, a couple of plainclothesmen, and Kate and I -synchronized our watches, just like in the war movies, and set Plan Final Notice (Miss Moselle's somewhat morbid suggestion) to work. At six-forty, the two plainclothesmen were scheduled to walk through the rain up to the Lord's front door. The rest of us would be scattered at various spots up and down Stettinius. The plainclothesmen were to tell Jake that they'd had a tip that his brother was hiding out in Milford. He hadn't been pinned down, yet. But there was going to be a house-to-house search of the whole area in the morning. Jake was to stay by the phone in case Hack called. All calls would be monitored.

The plainclothesmen would drive off, and if Miss Gibson were right and Jake really did feel that mixture of devotion, anger, and guilt that bonded him to his brother, and if he did know,where he was, and if there was a childhood hideaway in Milford, then he'd lead us to him. And once he'd delivered his warning -judging by what Lester the speed freak had told me, the same warning he must have been giving Hack all his life, that admonition that was his peculiar form of brotherly love- we'd close in on Haskell Lord.

There were an awful lot of "ifs" in that formula. An awful lot that could go wrong, as Miss Moselle, who'd been lending an ear, quickly pointed out. Even to me it sounded vaguely ridiculous -the plotting of a television melodrama. Things just didn't work that neatly in the real world, even if that neatness was a true reflection of the symmetry of Lord family life, of what Miss Moselle might term the Capricorn-like fit of Jake and Haskell's psyches.

"I may be wrong," Jessie said, "but it seems to me that Jacob could simply drive to a pay phone and ring his brother up, without even taking you any closer to his hiding place than that. Of course there may not be a phone in this farmhouse. Still, it's something to consider."

Al and George looked at me and I shook my head. I was beginning to feel a little sympathy for Ringold.

"And there's no guarantee," Kate added, "that Norris Reaves was telling the truth. Hack doesn't have to be in Milford. He could be anywhere."

"Just what the hell do you ladies suggest we do?" George DeVries said.

We all looked at Miss Moselle, who pinked a little, cleared her throat, and said, "If I'm not being too bold, would it not be judicious to -what is the word- divide your forces? Perhaps Mrs. Lord knows something of this boyhood hideaway. I mean, of course, if it does exist. And then there's always the possibility that you might find something of value -a clue in the boy's room. Haskell is an artist, after all. Perhaps he drew a sketch of his hiding place?"

"Waste of time," DeVries said.

But I wasn't so sure. Hack had left those drawings in Effie's trailer as a clue. Art or its destruction seem to run through the case like a theme. Cal Levy agreed with me.

"Sounds right smart," he said.

So after a bit of debate, we modified the plan to the degree that Kate would stay behind at the Lord home while the rest of us followed Jake. I was a little surprised at how quickly Kate acquiesced, seeing that DeVries, in particular, had made it clear that she'd be better off out of the way. But when I asked her, as we walked out to the parking lot, why she'd changed her mind about helping to catch the Ripper, she said, "I haven't. But if catching the Ripper means watching a man like DeVries shoot him down in cold blood, I'm willing to forgo the pleasure."

"That's not going to happen," I said. "Not unless Hack makes it happen."

She shook her head and said, "I wouldn't bet on it. Besides I think I have a better chance of locating our Ripper at the Lord house than you do off in Milford."

"Maybe," I said. "But if you do come up with something, Kate, for chrissake, don't go after him on your own."

"I may be headstrong, Harry," she said with a wink, "but I'm not an idiot."
 

AT SIX-THIRTY, Kate and I drove through the rain to Stettinius and parked about three doors down from the Lord house. At six-forty on the nose, the plainclothesmen pulled up in a blueand-white city car. We watched them through the rain-spattered windshield as they walked briskly up to the Lord front door two husky men in green raincoats and khaki hats, with tough, efficient looks on their faces.

"Now keep your fingers crossed," I said to Kate.

The door opened and Jake stepped out onto the stoop. He smiled his subdued, choirboy's smile and the two men began their spiel. Jake stopped them once, with an upturned palm, then pointed with his arm to the street, as if he were trying to get his geography straight. One of the agents nodded and said a few more words.

"That's it," I said. "They've given him the bait."

The two cops turned on their heels and walked back down to their car. Jake kept an eye on them as they drove off, then looked back through the door with something like resignationas if he'd caught sight of his mother standing at the foot of the stairs. He walked slowly into the house, closing the door behind him.

"Now what?" Kate whispered with excitement.

And I realized, suddenly, that I was excited, too. After a week of groping about, after Twyla and Effie and Norris and that barn, I'd have to have been a lot less sanguine than I was not to have gotten excited.

"Now we sit back," I said. "And hope that Jake swallows the bait."
 
 

By ten o'clock most of our excitement had drained away. No one had stirred inside the Lord house. No one had even come to the window. We'd shifted around on the car seat a couple dozen times. Played a few games of twenty questions. (Mona Lisa, turnstile, Jake Lord.) Necked a little. And finally understood that Final Notice wasn't going to work.

It should have worked. By all psychological rights, Jake Lord should have come surging out the door -to reproach and clean up after his prodigal brother. Only Jake didn't come out. Which meant one of two things -either he knew that his brother wasn't in Milford or, after two murders and a police investigation, he'd finally given up on Haskell and decided to face the world without the help of a scapegoat he could blame for all of his problems.

Kate was being polite. But I could tell from her Cheshire grin that she was a little satisfied that her theory was being proved right -that Jake was just a nice young man with a sex murderer for a brother.

"We can still search the house," she said with peak of pleasure in her voice.

"He's going to come out," I said. "Just give him time."

"Maybe he has an invisible car?"

"Shut up, Kate," I said.

She sat back on the car seat and smiled.

"You've just never been on a stake-out before," I said haughtily. "Sometimes it takes days before you get a response."

"Years," Kate Davis said.

"Maybe if we gave him another dose of the cops?"

"Tell him the bloodhounds were being trucked out to Milford at twelve?"

"I'm thinking of a thing, Kate," I said. "And I don't think you'd want to know what it is."

"Everybody makes mistakes," she said. And I said, "Shit."
 
 

Two more hours went by. In the rain and,the cold. My good spirits were wearing thin. And Kate's were just about worn out.

"It's not working, Harry," she said. "And my ass is turning blue."

"I could warm it up for you."

She giggled and said, "Maybe later."

And at that moment, after almost six hours of waiting, I heard a car start up behind the Lord house.

"He's probably going out for a doughnut," Kate said. But her voice was stern and when I looked at her face, there was no playfulness left in it.

"I'll be O.K.," I said.

I bent down and kissed her lips. She wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered, "Please be careful, darling. And don't do anything heroic."

"And you, too."

We kissed again -for a long moment- then I hopped out of the Pinto and dashed across Stettinius to Al Foster's Chevy. DeVries and Cal Levy were sitting in the back seat.

"All right, boys," Foster said. "Let's go."
 
 

For above ten minutes, none of us was sure exactly where Jacob Lord was leading us. He wandered up and down the suburban streets of Hyde Park as if he weren't quite sure himself about where he was going. When he turned on Erie, I thought we'd lost him.