Her head leaned on my shoulder. “I’m caught,” she said. “I’ve been trying all day to get up the nerve to walk into the water. What am I going to do? I can’t endure forever in a room.”
“In the church you were brought up in, suicide is a sin.”
“I’ve committed worse.”
I waited. The fog was all around us now, an element composed of air and water and a fishy chill. It made a kind of limbo, out of this world, where anything could be said. Isobel Graff said: “I committed the worst sin of all. They were together in the light and I was alone in the darkness. Then the light was like broken glass in my eyes, but I could see to shoot. I shot her in the groin and she died.”
“This happened in your cabaña?”
She nodded faintly. I felt the movement rather than saw it. “I caught her there with Simon. She crawled out here and died on the beach. The waves came up and took her. I wish that they would take me.”
“What happened to Simon that night?”
“Nothing. He ran away. To do it again another day and do it and do it and do it. He was terrified when I came out of the back room with the gun in my hand. He was the one I really intended to kill but he scuttled out the door.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“It was Simon’s target pistol. He kept it in his locker. He taught me to fire it himself, on this very beach.” She stirred in the crook of my arm. “What do you think of me now?”
I didn’t have to answer her. There was a moving voice in the fog above our heads. It was calling her name, Isobel.
“Who is it? Don’t let them take me.” She turned on her knees and clutched my hand. Hers was fish-cold.
Footsteps and light were descending the concrete steps. I got up and went to meet them. The beam of light wavered toward me. Graff’s dim and nimbused figure was behind it. The long, thin nose of a target pistol protruded from his other hand. My gun was already in mine.
“You’re covered, Graff. Drop it directly in front of you.”
His pistol thudded softly in the sand. I stooped and picked it up. It was an early-model German Walther, .22 caliber, with a custom-made walnut grip too small to fit my hand. The gun was loaded. Distrusting its hair-trigger action, I set the safety and shoved it down under my belt.
“I’ll take the light, too.”
He handed me his flashlight. I turned its beam upward on his face and saw it naked for an instant. His mouth was soft and twisted, his eyes were frightened.
“I heard my wife. Where is she?”
I swung the flash-beam along the beach. Its cone of brilliance filled with swirling fog. Isobel Graff ran away from it. Black and huge on the gray air, her shadow ran ahead of her. She seemed to be driving off a fury which dwarfed her and tormented her and mimicked all her movements.
Graff called her name again and ran after her. I followed along behind and saw her fall and get up and fall again. Graff helped her to her feet. They walked back toward me, slowly and clumsily. She dragged her feet and hung her head, turning her face away from the light. Graff’s arm around her waist propelled her forward.
I took the target pistol out of my belt and showed it to her. “Is this the gun you used to shoot Gabrielle Torres?”
She glanced at it and nodded mutely.
“No,” Graff said. “Admit nothing, Isobel.”
“She’s already confessed,” I said.
“My wife is mentally incompetent. Her confession is not valid evidence.”
“The gun is. The sheriff’s ballistics department will have the matching slugs. The gun and the slugs together will be unshakable evidence. Where did you get the gun, Graff?”
“Carl Walther made it for me, in Germany, many years ago.”
“I’m talking about the last twenty-four hours. Where did you get it this time?”
He answered carefully: “I have had it in my possession continuously for over twenty years.”
“The hell you have. Stern had it last night before he was killed. Did you kill him for it?”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Did you have him killed?”
“I did not.”
“Somebody knocked off Stern to get hold of this gun. You must know who it was, and you might as well tell me. Everything’s going to come out now. Not even your kind of money can stop it.”
“Is money what you want from me? You can have money.” His voice dragged with contempt – for me, and perhaps for himself.
“I’m not for sale like Marfeld,” I said. “Your boss thug tried to buy me. He’s in the Vegas clink with a body to explain.”
“I know that,” Graff said. “But I am talking about a very great deal of money. A hundred thousand dollars in cash. Now. Tonight.”
“Where would you get that much in cash tonight?’
“From Clarence Bassett. He has it in his office safe. I paid it to him this evening. It was the price he set on the pistol. Take it away from him, and you can have it.”
Chapter 32
THERE WAS LIGHT in Bassett’s office. I knocked so hard that I bruised my knuckles. He came to the door in shirt sleeves. His face was putty-colored, with blue hollows under the eyes. His eyes had a Lazarus look, and hardly seemed to recognize me.
“Archer? What’s the trouble, man?”
“You’re the trouble, Clarence.”
“Oh, I hope not.” He noticed the couple behind me, and did a big take. “You’ve found her, Mr. Graff. I’m so glad.”
“Are you?” Graff said glumly. “Isobel has confessed everything to this man. I want my money back.”
Bassett’s face underwent a process of change. The end product of the process was a bright, nervous grin which resembled the rictus of a dead horse.
“Am I to understand this? I return the money, and we drop the whole matter? Nothing more will be said?”
“Plenty more will be said. Give him his money, Clarence.”
He stood tense in the doorway, blocking my way. Visions of possible action flitted behind his pale-blue eyes and died. “It’s not here.”
“Open the safe and we’ll see for ourselves.”
“You have no warrant.”
“I don’t need one. You’re willing to co-operate. Aren’t you?”
He reached up and plucked at his neck above the open collar of his button-down shirt, stretching the loose skin and letting it pull itself back into place. “This has been a bit of a shock. As a matter of fact, I am willing to co-operate. I have nothing to hide.”
He turned abruptly, crossed the room, and took down the photograph of the three divers. A cylindrical safe was set in the wall behind it. I covered him with the target pistol as he spun the bright chrome dials. The gun he had used on Leonard was probably at the bottom of the sea, but there could be another gun in the safe. All the safe contained was money, though – bundles of money done up in brown bank paper.
“Take it,” Graff said. “It is yours.”
“It would only make a bum out of me. Besides, I couldn’t afford to pay the tax on it.”
“You are joking. You must want money. You work for money, don’t you?”
“I want it very badly,” I said. “But I can’t take this money. It wouldn’t belong to me, I would belong to it. It would expect me to do things, and I would have to do them. Sit on the lid of this mess of yours, the way Marfeld did, until dry rot set in.”
“It would be easy to cover up,” Graff said.
He turned a basilisk eye on Clarence Bassett. Bassett flattened himself against the wall. The fear of death invaded his face and galvanized his body. He swatted the gun out of my hand, went down on his hands and knees, and got a grip on the butt. I snaked it away from him before he could consolidate his grip, lifted him by the collar, and set him in the chair at the end of his desk.