The Blue Hammer (15 page)

“Was Richard ever questioned about William’s death?”

The sheriff answered after some delay, and when he did answer he spoke with difficulty: “Not to my knowledge. I wasn’t in charge then, you understand. I was just a junior deputy.”

“Who conducted the investigation?”

“I did, for the most part. I was the one that found the body, not too far from here.” He pointed east toward the New Mexico desert. “Understand, we didn’t find him right away. He’d been dead for several days, and the varmints had been at him. There wasn’t much left of his face. We weren’t even sure that he’d been killed by human hands until we got the medical examiner out from Tucson. By that time it was too late to do much.”

“What would you have done if you’d had the chance?”

The sheriff became quite still again, as if he were listening to voices from the past that I couldn’t hear. His eyes were shadowed and remote.

Finally he said, with too much angry certainty, “I wouldn’t have done anything different. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. I don’t know why I’m talking to you at all.”

“Because you’re an honest man, and you’re worried.”

“What am I worried about?”

“Mildred Mead, for one thing. You’re afraid that something has happened to her.”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t deny that.”

“And I think you’re still worried about that body you found in the desert.”

He looked at me sharply but made no other response. I said, “Are you certain that it was her son William’s body?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not that well. But he was carrying his official papers. In addition to which, we brought Mildred out from Tucson. I was there when she made the identification.” He went into another of his silences.

“Did Mildred take the body back to Tucson with her?”

“She wanted to. But the army decided that after we got finished with it the body should go to Mead’s wife. We packed the poor remains into a sealed coffin and shipped them back to the wife in California. At first none of us knew he had a wife. He hadn’t been married very long. He married her after he entered the service, a friend of his told me.”

“Was this a local friend?”

“No. He was an army buddy. I disremember his name—something like Wilson or Jackson. Anyway, he was very fond of Mead and he wangled a leave to come out here and talk to me about him. But he couldn’t tell me much, except that Mead had a wife and a baby boy in California. I wanted to go and see them, but the county wouldn’t put up the expense money for me. Mead’s army buddy got shipped out in a hurry, and I never saw him again, though later, after the war, he sent me a postcard from a vets’ hospital in California. One way and another, I never did make a case.” The sheriff sounded faintly apologetic.

“I don’t understand why Richard Chantry wasn’t questioned.”

“It’s simple enough. Richard was out of the state before the body was found. I made a real effort to have him brought back—you understand, I’m not saying he was guilty, in any way—but I couldn’t get any support from higher authorities. The Chantrys still had a lot of political power, and the Chantry name was kept out of the William Mead case. It wasn’t even publicized that Mildred Mead was his mother.”

“Was old Felix Chantry still alive in 1943?”

“No. He died the year before.”

“Who was running the copper mine?”

“A fellow named Biemeyer. He wasn’t the official head at the time, but he was making the decisions.”

“Including the one not to question Richard Chantry?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

His voice had changed. He had started to lie, or to withhold the truth. Like every sheriff in every county, he would have his political debts and his unspeakable secrets.

I wanted to ask him whom he was trying to protect, but decided not to. I was far out of my own territory, among people I didn’t know or entirely understand, and there was a sense of unexpended trouble in the air.

^chapter
21

The sheriff was leaning toward me slightly, almost as if he could overhear my thoughts. He was as still as a perching hawk, with some of a hawk’s poised threat.

“I’ve been open with you,” he said. “But you’ve been holding back on me. You haven’t even told me who you represent.”

“Biemeyer,” I said.

The sheriff smiled broadly without showing any teeth at all. “You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. The girl is Biemeyer’s daughter.”

Without any obvious change, his smile turned into a grin of shock and alarm. He must have become aware that he was revealing himself. Like a hostile fist relaxing, his face smoothed itself out into blandness. Only his sharp gray eyes were hostile and watchful. He jerked a thumb toward the mountain behind him.

“The girl you left up there is Biemeyer’s daughter?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t you know he’s majority owner of the copper mine?”

“He makes no secret of it,” I said.

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

It was a question I couldn’t answer easily. Perhaps I’d let myself imagine that Doris might possibly be better off in a world quite different from her parents’ world, at least for a while. But this world belonged to Biemeyer, too.

The sheriff was saying, “The copper mine is the biggest employer at this end of the state.”

“Okay, we’ll put the girl to work in the copper mine.”

He stiffened. “What in hell do you mean by that? Nobody said anything about putting her to work.”

“It was just a joke.”

“It’s not funny. We’ve got to get her out of that funny farm before some harm comes to her. My wife and I can put her up for the night. We have a nice spare room—it used to be our own daughter’s room. Let’s get going, eh?”

The sheriff left Fred in the deputy’s custody and drove me up the mountain in his official car. He parked it in the lane behind Fred’s old blue Ford. A dented white moon watched us over the mountain’s shoulder.

The big house in the canyon was dark and silent, its stillness hardly broken by a man’s random snore, a girl’s faint crying. The crying girl turned out to be Doris. She came to the door when I called her name. She had on a white flannelette nightgown that covered her like a tent from the neck down. Her eyes were wide and dark and her face was wet.

“Get your clothes on, honey,” the sheriff said. “We’re taking you out of this place.”

“But I like it here.”

“You wouldn’t like it if you stayed. This is no place for a girl like you, Miss Biemeyer.”

Her body stiffened and her chin came up. “You can’t make me leave.”

The leader had come up behind her, not too close. He didn’t speak. He seemed to be watching the sheriff with the detachment of a spectator at somebody else’s funeral.

“Don’t be like that, now, will you?” the sheriff said to Doris. “I’ve got a daughter of my own, I know how it is. We all like a little adventure. But then it comes time to get back to normal living.”

“I’m not normal,” she said.

“Don’t worry, you will be, honey. What you need is to find the right young man. The same thing happened to my girl. She went and lived in a commune in Seattle for a year. But then she came back and found Mr. Right, and they’ve got two children now and everybody’s happy.”

“I’m never going to have any children,” she said.

But she put on her clothes and went out to the sheriff’s car with him. I lingered behind with the leader. He stepped out onto the porch, moving rather uncertainly. In the light from the sky, his eyes and his white hair seemed faintly phosphorescent.

“She would have been welcome to stay with us.”

“For a price?”

“We all contribute as we can. We practice tithing, each paying according to his ability. My own contribution is largely spiritual. Some of us earn our keep at humbler tasks.”

“Where did you study theology?”

“In the world,” he said. “Benares, Camarillo, Lompoc. I admit I don’t have a degree. But I’ve done a great deal of counseling. I find myself able to help people. I could have helped Miss Biemeyer. I doubt that the sheriff can.” He reached out and touched my arm with his long thin hand. “I believe I could help you.”

“Help me do what?”

“Do nothing, perhaps.” He spread his arms wide in an actorish gesture. “You seem to be a man engaged in an endless battle, an endless search. Has it ever occurred to you that the search may be for yourself? And that the way to find yourself is to be still and silent, silent and still?” He dropped his arms to his sides.

I was tired enough to be taken by his questions, and to find myself repeating them in my mind. They were questions I had asked myself, though never in just those terms. Perhaps, after all, the truth I was looking for couldn’t be found in the world. You had to go up on a mountain and wait for it, or find it in yourself.

But even as I was taking a short-term lease on a piece of this thought, I was watching the lights of Copper City framed in the canyon mouth, and planning what I would do there in the morning.

“I don’t have any money.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “But there seems to be enough for everyone. Money is the least of our worries.”

“You’re lucky.”

He disregarded my irony. “I’m glad you see that. We’re very lucky indeed.”

“Where did you get the money to buy this place?”

“Some of our people have income.” The idea seemed to please him, and he smiled. “We may not go in for worldly show, but this isn’t exactly a poorhouse. Of course it isn’t all paid for.”

“I’m not surprised. I understand it cost you over a hundred thousand dollars.”

His smile faded. “Are you investigating us?”

“I have no interest in you at all, now that the girl is out of here.”

“We did her no harm,” he said quickly.

“I’m not suggesting you did.”

“But I suppose the sheriff will be bothering us now. Simply because we gave shelter to Biemeyer’s daughter.”

“I hope not. I’ll put in a word with him, if you like.”

“I would like, very much.” He relaxed visibly and then audibly, letting out a long sighing breath.

“In return for which,” I said, “you can do something for me.”

“What is it?” He was suspicious of me again.

“Help me to get in touch with Mildred Mead.”

He spread his hands, palms up. “I wouldn’t know how. I don’t have her address.”

“Aren’t you making payments to her for this house?”

“Not directly. Through the bank. I haven’t seen her since she went to California. That was several months ago.”

“Which bank is handling the account?”

“The Copper City branch of Southwestern Savings. They’ll tell you I’m not a swindler. I’m not, you know.”

I believed him, provisionally. But he had two voices. One of them belonged to a man who was reaching for a foothold in the spiritual world. The other voice, which I had just been listening to, belonged to a man who was buying a place in the actual world with other people’s money.

It was an unstable combination. He could end as a con man,
or a radio preacher with a million listeners, or a bartender with a cure of souls in Fresno. Perhaps he had already been some of those things.

But I trusted him up to a point. I gave him the keys to the blue Ford and asked him to keep it for Fred, just in case Fred ever came back that way.

^chapter
22

We drove back down the mountain to the substation and found Fred sitting inside with the deputy. I couldn’t tell at first glance whether he was a prisoner or a patient. He had an adhesive bandage across the bridge of his nose and cotton stuffed up his nostrils. He looked like a permanent loser.

The sheriff, who was a small winner, went into the inner office to make a phone call. His voice was a smooth blend of confidence and respect. He was making arrangements to fly Doris home in a copper-company jet.

He lifted his head, flushed and bright-eyed, and offered me the receiver. “Mr. Biemeyer wants to talk to you.”

I didn’t really want to talk to Biemeyer, now or ever. But I took the receiver and said into it, “This is Archer.”

“I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” he said. “After all, I’m paying you good money.”

I didn’t remind him that his wife had paid me. “You’re hearing from me now.”

“Thanks to Sheriff Brotherton. I know how you private dicks operate. You let the men in uniform do the work and then you step in and take the credit.”

For a hotheaded instant, I was close to hanging up on
Biemeyer. I had to remind myself that the case was far from over. The stolen painting was still missing. There were two unsolved murders, Paul Grimes’s and now William Mead’s.

“There’s credit enough for everybody,” I said. “We have your daughter and she’s in reasonably good shape. I gather she’ll be flying home tomorrow in one of your planes.”

“First thing in the morning. I was just finalizing the arrangement with Sheriff Brotherton.”

“Could you hold that plane until late morning or so? I have some things to do in Copper City, and I don’t think your daughter should travel unaccompanied.”

“I don’t like the delay,” he said. “Mrs. Biemeyer and I are very eager to see Doris.”

“May I speak to Mrs. Biemeyer?”

“I suppose you can,” he said reluctantly. “She’s right here.”

There was some indistinct palaver at the other end, and then Ruth Biemeyer’s voice came over the line. “Mr. Archer? I’m relieved to hear from you. Doris hasn’t been arrested, has she?”

“No. Neither has Fred. I want to bring them both home with me tomorrow on the company plane. But I may not be able to get out of here much before noon. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks very much. Good night, Mrs. Biemeyer.”

I hung up and told the sheriff that the plane would leave at noon tomorrow with me and Doris and Fred. Brotherton didn’t argue. My telephone conversation had invested me with some of the Biemeyer charisma.

On the strength of this, I put in a word for the people in Chantry Canyon, as I had promised, and offered to assume responsibility for Fred. The sheriff agreed. Doris, he said, would be spending the night at his house.