He stepped forward calmly. “May I see those photographs?” he asked.
The sheriff turned to look at him, slipped the Manila envelope down inside his jacket pocket.
“Why?” he asked.
“I want to see if I know the man. He looked like a man who was a buddy of mine.”
“What name?” Bill Eldon asked.
Frank Ames could see that his ruse was working. No one was looking at Roberta Coe now. All eyes were fastened on him.
“What name?” the sheriff repeated.
Ames searched the files of his memory with frantic haste. “Pete Ingle,” he blurted, giving the name of the first man whom he had ever seen killed; and because it was the first time he had seen a buddy shot down, it had left an indelible impression on Frank’s mind.
Sheriff Eldon started to remove the envelope from his jacket pocket, then thought better of it. His eyes made shrewd appraisal of Frank Ames’ countenance, said, “Where is this Pete Ingle now?”
“Dead.”
“Where did he die?”
“Guadalcanal.”
“How tall?”
“Five feet, ten inches.”
“What did he weigh?”
“I guess a hundred and fifty-five or sixty.”
“Blond or brunette?”
“Brunette.”
“I’m going to check up on this, you know,” Bill Eldon said, his voice kindly. “What color eyes?”
“Blue.”
Eldon put the picture back in his pocket. “I don’t think we’ll do anything more about these pictures until after the coroner comes.”
Ames flashed a glance toward Roberta, saw that she had, in some measure, recovered her composure. It was only a quick fleeting glance. He didn’t dare attract attention to her by looking directly at her.
It was as he turned away that he saw Sylvia Jessup watching him with eyes that had lost their mocking humor and were engaged in respectful appraisal, as though she were sizing up a potential antagonist, suddenly conscious of his strong points, but probing for his weak points.
By using the Forest Service telephone to arrange for horses, a plane, and one of the landing fields maintained by the fire-fighting service, the official party managed to arrive at the scene of the crime shortly before noon.
Leonard Keating, the young, ruthlessly ambitious deputy district attorney, accompanied James Logan, the coroner.
Sheriff Bill Eldon, John Olney the ranger, Logan the coroner, and Keating the deputy district attorney, launched an official investigation, and from the start Keating’s attitude was hostile. He felt all of the arrogant impatience of youth for anyone older than forty, and Bill Eldon’s conservative caution was to Keating’s mind evidence of doddering senility.
“You say that this is Frank Ames’ rifle?” Keating asked, indicating the .22 rifle with the telescopic sight.
“That’s right,” Bill Eldon said, his slow drawl more pronounced than ever. “After the other folks had left, Ames took me over here, showed me the rifle, and—”
“Showed you the rifle!” Keating interrupted.
“Now don’t get excited,” Eldon said. “We’d found it before, but we left it right where it was, just to see what he’d do when he found it. We staked out where we could watch.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. Later on he showed it to me after the others had left.”
“Who were the others?”
“This party that’s camped down here a mile or so at the Springs.”
“Oh, yes. You told me about them. Vacationists. I know Harvey W. Dowling, the big-time insurance man. You say there’s a Richard Nottingham with him. That wouldn’t be Dick Nottingham who was on the intercollegiate boxing team?”
“I believe that’s right,” the sheriff said. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Yes, yes, a good one too. I was a freshman in college when he was in his senior year. Really a first-class boxer, quicker than a streak of greased lightning and with a punch in either hand. I want to meet him.”
“Well, we’ll go down there and talk with them. I thought you’d want to look around here. There was nothing in his pockets,” the sheriff said. “But when we got to the lining of the coat—”
“Wait a minute,” Keating interrupted. “You’re not supposed to look in the pockets. You’re not supposed to touch the body. No one’s supposed to move it until the coroner can get here.”
“When those folks wrote the lawbooks,” the sheriff interrupted, “they didn’t have in mind a case where it would take hours for a coroner to arrive and where it might be necessary to get some fast action.”
“The law is the law,” Keating announced, “and it’s not for us to take into consideration what was in the minds of the lawmakers. We read the statutes and have no need to interpret them unless there should be some latent ambiguity, and no such latent ambiguity seems to exist in this case. However, what’s done now is done. Let’s look around here.”
“I’ve already looked around,” the sheriff said.
“I know,” Keating snapped, “but we’ll take another look around the place. You say it rained here yesterday afternoon?”
“A little before sundown it started raining steady. Before then we’d had a thunderstorm. The rain kept up until around ten o’clock. The man was killed before the first rain. I figure he was killed early in the afternoon.”
Keating looked at him.
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, he’d been hiking, and he was trying to establish an overnight camp here. Now, I’ve got a hunch he came in the same way you did — by airplane, only he didn’t have any horses to meet him.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well,” the sheriff said, “he brought in what stuff he brought in on his back. There’s a pack board over there with a tumpline, and his roll of blankets is under that tree. His whole camp is just the way he’d dropped it. Then he’d gone up to get some wood, and the way I figure it, he’d wanted to get that big log so he could keep pushing the ends together and keep a small fire going all night. He didn’t have a tent. His bedroll is a light down sleeping bag, the whole thing weighing about eight pounds. But he had quite a bit of camp stuff, maybe a thirty-five pound pack.”
“What does all that have to do with the airplane?” Keating asked impatiently.
“Well, now,” Eldon said, “I was just explaining. He carried this stuff in on his back, but you look at the leather straps on that pack board and you see that they’re new. The whole outfit is new. Now, those leather straps are stained a little bit. If he’d had to bring that stuff in from up the valley, he’d have done a lot of sweating.”
“Humph,” Keating said. “I don’t see that necessarily follows. Are there no roads into this back country?”
The sheriff shook his head. “This is a primitive area. You get into it by trails. There aren’t any roads closer than twenty miles. I don’t think that man carried that camp outfit on his back for twenty miles uphill. I think he walked not more than three or four miles, and I think it was on the level. I’ve already used Olney’s telephone at the ranger station to get my under-sheriff on the job, checking with all charter airplanes to see if they brought a man like this into the country.”
Keating said, “Well, I’ll look around while the coroner goes over the body. There’s a chance you fellows may have overlooked some clues that sharper — and younger — eyes will pick up.”
Logan bent over the body. Keating skirmished around through the underbrush, his lean, youthful figure doubled over, moving rapidly as though he were a terrier prowling on a scent. He soon called out, “Look over here, gentlemen. And be careful how you walk. The place is all messed up with tracks already, but try not to obliterate this piece of evidence.”