Flynn's In (4 page)

“Then you have only twelve guest rooms.”

“We’re a small lodge.”

“You must have a pretty high room rate,” Flynn shivered. “To pay the fuel bill. Not at all sure I can afford it.”

Behind Morris was a closed door. Wood-burned on it were the words: “Manager Private.” As they stood there, Flynn heard the voices of either two or three women talking, sometimes simultaneously.

“I see the Shaws are here.” Morris had ducked his head to look through the front window. “Things have been moving slowly, I guess. Sunday morning. Chief Jensen is with the body now. I’ve told him you’re here, Inspector. In a manner of speaking, of course.” Morris allowed a small grin. “He’s waiting for you. And Doc Allister is here.” Morris’ grin opened as he looked at Flynn. “Doc Allister gets something like a thousand a year from the county to play coroner. He’s about the only doctor we got. At least, he’s the oldest.”

“Not a qualified pathologist,” said Flynn.

“He’s best at sending out bills.” Morris came around the counter. “I’ll bring you to them. You going to stay here, Mister Wahler?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have a breakfast room, as you know. There’s a Mister Coffee maker over there by the fireplace.”

“Thanks.” Hands in the pockets of his suit jacket, to warm himself, Wahler sat in a wicker chair in the lounge.

As Morris led Flynn through the main door and around the building he said, as if he could hardly wait for the opportunity, “It happened last night. About eleven. I was in the office just watching the late news. I heard the blast of a shotgun from outside the building. I rushed out and there was Huttenbach…”

There was Huttenbach.

They had gone a few meters onto unkempt grass from the path surrounding the lodge.

Face up on the grass lay the body of a young man. His head
and upper body were dotted with blood. One eye was still open. The other was half-closed, with a single dot of blood on the lid.

Two men stood nearby.

One said, “Inspector Wynn?”

“Flynn.”

In gray mountain light of an October Sunday morn, two men shook hands over the corpse.

“Alfred Jensen. Bellingham Chief of Police. Well, I’m all the police there is in Bellingham. I’m also head of the town road department. Mostly, that means I’m in charge of snow removal. This here is Doc Allister. He’s pretty much in charge of births and deaths ’round here, not much good in-between, if you’re just sick.”

Doc Allister had a big nose, which he lowered and raised in salute to Flynn.

“Death was instantaneous,” Doctor Allister stated, showing he was not completely innocent of the formal language of the witness stand. “Result of a shotgun discharge. I would put the hour of death at somewhere around eleven o’clock last night.”

“Where’s the shotgun?” Flynn asked.

“In my car,” Jensen said. “It’s a pretty good one. Had his initials on it.
D.H
. It was lying right here when we found it.”

Jensen pointed to the ground near Huttenbach’s feet.

“Here’s our funeral director,” Jensen said. The two black-suited men from the hearse had come around the corner of the lodge. They walked in slow parade. “Shaw and son. Shaw’s pa used to be the town drunk,” Jensen said to Flynn. “Now Shaw is. Shaw’s son is workin’ on it. Depressing, undertaking. Hello, Fred!” Jensen said cheerily enough. “Glad you could make it.”

Shaw’s and son’s blotchy faces nodded.

“We’ll just let this Inspector inspect around a little, then you can take the body. Got your stretcher, or whatever you call it?”

Shaw looked at the rough ground.

“Better get somethin’ to carry him off.”

Flynn crouched by the body.

Indeed death had been instantaneous. There had been little bleeding. The young man’s tweed jacket and light woolen shirt,
opened at the throat, had been shredded by shotgun pellets. All his clothes, including his light corduroy trousers, socks and loafers, were rain-soaked as he lay. His hair was wet. A hank of hair matted on his forehead.

He was a slim, well-built young man, not more than thirty years old, if that. Flynn guessed his sports would have been squash racquets, handball, something that required speed, agility and brains rather than weight or brute force. His wrist watch was heavy gold. On his right wrist was a gold identification bracelet. A shotgun pellet had shattered one tooth. Other than that his teeth were white and even.

The grass around him had been washed by rain and stomped down by Carl Morris, Doctor Allister, Chief Jensen and whoever else.

Flynn lifted the late Congressman Huttenbach’s left arm, felt it, and let it drop. Putting his death at about eleven the previous night was not far wrong, if wrong at all.

Knees snapping, Chief Jensen crouched beside Flynn. “Really appreciate your expert opinion on all this, Inspector. I know you big-city police guys see more of murders than you do of your own coffee cups.”

“I don’t use stimulants,” Flynn said.

The nearest line of trees was more than two hundred meters down the hill from where they were crouching.

Chief Jensen was staring at the ground. “The man was killed by his own shotgun,” he said slowly. “One barrel. We hear he has a wife and kids. Young man. Congressman from south of here, somewhere. It’s easy enough to say he got killed accidentally while cleaning his shotgun.” The Chief looked off at the line of trees. “That’s what we say around here about most such suicides.”

Flynn swiveled on the balls of his feet.

Shaw and son were pushing, pulling a metal framed stretcher on wheels over the rough ground toward them.

Flynn stood up. “No reason why you shouldn’t move him. I take it you took photographs of all this.”

“Yes, we did,” Chief Jensen said happily. He stood up. “My son came out here at very first light and took pictures. He has
one of those idiot-proof cameras, you know? And he’ll turn them into the drugstore first thing in the morning. We should have ’em back Wednesday, Thursday.”

“You took the photographs before you removed the shotgun?”

“Yes, we did,” Jensen said proudly.

“Did you encase the shotgun so it can be examined for fingerprints?”

Jensen’s face fell. “No. We didn’t. What fingerprints could we expect on it? It was his own gun. His own initials were on the stock. It had already been rained on, last night, by the time we got here.”

Flynn looked at Morris, standing nearby, smiling. His smile seemed to suggest he was ready to burst out singing,
Oh, what a beautiful morning
.

“If you’re ready, Inspector, I’ll show you the Congressman’s room.”

“Really appreciate all you’re doing, Inspector,” Chief Jensen crowed. “Us country boys don’t get to see a real professional work too often. Damned nice of you to disturb your holiday weekend and come out and give us a hand. Busman’s holiday, uh?”

Flynn stared at him.

“It will be fun to hear you give evidence, too,” the Chief continued. “You’ll give it right. As it should be done.”

Flynn asked Morris, “Has Mrs. Huttenbach arrived yet?”

“Don’t think so. Not by the time we came out here.”

A gangly teenaged boy in a hunting cap came around the corner of the lodge and stopped. A camera hung on a strap from his neck. In his hand he had a notebook and ballpoint pen.

“There’s the press, though,” Chief Jensen said. He called, “Hi, Jimmy!”

Doctor Allister was already walking toward the Voice of the People.

Jensen hurried over to him, too. “Thought you were at your grandmother’s this weekend, Jimmy. Ain’t she eighty?”

“I came back,” the boy said. “Patty called me and said there’d been a mor-der.”

Doctor Allister’s beak bobbed as he dictated into the notebook what he had to say to the world.

“Show me the room you gave Huttenbach,” Flynn said to Morris. “Even the White Queen can believe six things before breakfast.”

Silently, Wahler drove Flynn back up the paved road, along the dirt road, and through the check point in the tall, miles-long fence surrounding The Rod and Gun Club.

Just as they were cresting the last hill before coming to the lake, a helicopter roared up from behind the clubhouse. When it got well above tree level, it turned, and still gaining altitude, flew southeast.

“My, my,” said Flynn. “It seems not everybody gets in and out through the hole in the fence. Some fly away under blades of steel.”

“G
rover,” Flynn found himself grumbling into the telephone. To the switchboard of The Old Records Building on Craigie Street, Flynn properly had asked for Sergeant Richard T. Whelan, but once hearing the voice of the man himself answer he could not restrain himself from addressing him by the nickname Flynn had given him but Sergeant Whelan never had accepted.

And Grover did not restrain himself from a prolonged sigh. “Yes, Inspector? Not coming in today?”

It was well past ten o’clock Sunday morning. Flynn seldom went to the office Sundays, which was why Grover usually did.

Taylor had met Wahler and Flynn at the door. The guard had phoned ahead their arrival. Taylor said he had put Flynn’s breakfast in his room.

Taylor led the way upstairs, to show Flynn his room. But Flynn went to the wide doorway of the club’s grand hall and looked in.

A skinny old man, totally naked, sat in a chair by the fire, reading. In the changing firelight the white skin and heavy blue veins of his legs and feet had almost the effect of a flashing neon light.

Behind Flynn, Wahler said under his breath, “That’s Wendell Oland. He doesn’t like to wear clothes.”

“And who is he when he’s dressed?”

“Senior partner at a major law firm. Income in the millions a year.”

Still dressed for fishing, shoeless, Senator Dunn Roberts sat in a chair within reach of the bar table. Even from across the big room, Flynn could see the man was despondently drunk. He might as well have been sitting in a slum doorway.

“Looks like the Senator missed breakfast,” commented Flynn.

“Not much.”

Four men, one in a heavy, torn bathrobe, sat at a poker
table down the room, playing seriously, silently. The only currency visible, blue in the firelight, was in one hundred dollar demoninations.

“A quiet Sunday morning in the country,” said Flynn.

In Flynn’s room instead of tea or coffee a silver pot of plain hot water for his herbal tea had been laid out, as well as a half grapefruit and French toast.

“Thoughtful of you,” Flynn said to Taylor. “Been working here long?”

Flynn lowered his tea bag into the pot of hot water.

“Just since last spring.”

“Are you from around here?”

“I’m from New York City.”

“Rather dead around here, isn’t it?”

Taylor’s ready grin filled his face again. “Getting deader every minute.”

Flynn saw that Cocky had been in. The chess set was laid out on a side table.

White pawn had been moved to King Four.

Flynn moved Black Pawn to King Four.

“Anything else you want, sir?”

“Just need to make a couple of phone calls after breakfast.”

“Right, sir. Dial seven, wait till you hear a clear line, then dial your number.”

So Flynn made the most of his breakfast and called Grover.

“I was called away,” Flynn said lamely.

“On another one of your mysterious trips, Frank?”

Grover doubtlessly had his own explanation, or explanations, for Flynn’s odd disappearances. Flynn had no idea what such explanations might be, but he was sure they lacked both accuracy and imagination. Not being able to explain his absences himself, he had never been able to enquire how Grover saw them.

“I’m on a trip, yes,” Flynn admitted. “And, yes, it is mysterious.”

“I bet.”

“Lieutenant Concannon is with me.”

A snort assaulted Flynn’s ear. “Hadn’t noticed him missing.”

“Grover, I’m particularly interested in that hit-and-run bicycle death on Tremont Street last night.”

“No one else is.”

“You mean, you aren’t. What have you done so far?”

“This old man was knocked off his bicycle and run over by a car traveling south at high speed about eight fifteen last night. Dead on arrival. A female witness said she could not give a description of car or driver, she was too horrified, she said, but she was able to say the car didn’t stop.”

“Didn’t stop at all? Not even slow down?”

“Didn’t even slow down. Just went through the intersection at high speed.”

“I doubt you could hit an old man on a bicycle, run over and kill him and not know something had happened. How many people were in the car?” Flynn asked.

Again Grover seemed to be referring to the scene-of-the-accident report. “Just the driver. She was pretty sure of that. ‘One head in the car,’ she said.”

“Male?”

“She thinks so, but not sure. It was dark out.”

“A peculiar time of day for it, Grover. A peculiar time of day.”

“What’s so peculiar?”

“Don’t most hit-and-run accidents happen just after the bars close for the night? And how many old men do you see pedaling a bicycle through city streets after dark?”

“Inspector, here you go again. Two damned fools bump into each other, one of ’em gets dead, and you want to turn the police department inside out.”

For a brief moment, Flynn envisioned turning Grover inside out. Revealed might be the perfect vacuum.

“You mean, Grover,” he said softly, slowly, “you suspect the bicyclist of contributory negligence?”

Usually, Flynn was uncertain of using such terms, as he really did not know what they meant. He never hesitated using such terms with Grover, however, as he knew Grover was less certain of their meaning than he was.

“You trying to solve your case load by telephone now, Inspector?”

“I might forwarder,” Flynn grumbled, “with able assistance.”

“I’m on the Police Eats Committee, Inspector. We’re having a big lunch meeting at the Hotex Lenox.”

“Grover, I think you know how enthusiastic I am about the level of the culinary arts in the police commissaries being raised above the standard taco.”

“You don’t like tacos?”