“Maybe he went there for a down payment?” Matthews asked.
Ben hit his fist on his thigh. “Hey! Lucille told her husband Danny had only been there once. Catelli found proof he had been there twice. Lucille told her husband Bronson had left the money there way back on September twenty-eighth. The recent prints could have been made last Thursday. Suppose on Danny’s first visit, he left the statement of what he’d found out about Verney. He spent a long time figuring out just how he’d handle it. Last Thursday he contacted Verney, got a thousand bucks, left it with Lucille the same day, as an emergency escape fund if the rest of it went sour.”
“Why not take it out to the camp?” Matthews asked.
“Maybe Drusilla had the idea she was going to go with him. If he wanted to go alone, it would be wise to stash the money some other place.”
“Too many assumptions,” Matthews said.
“We can check any withdrawal Verney may have made that day,” Ben said.
“He’s got a safe in his office,” Spence said. “It could have come out of there.”
“As soon as we get back, Al,” Ben said, “I want you and Dan Means to concentrate on Paul Verney. Find out what he was doing Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. I’m going to talk to Johnny Keefler.”
“I’ll talk to Burt Catton,” Matthews said.
Keefler had become a hollow man, a little empty-eyed ghost who talked in a listless and barely audible voice. It took Wixler a long time to bring Keefler around to his remembrance of the talk with Verney, and even longer to isolate the key factor in the conversation.
“Now let’s get this straight, Johnny. After Verney told you about the envelope, then you and he discussed where Danny could have left it?”
“I guess so.”
“What did you say, specifically?”
“—”
“Come on, Johnny. What did you say?”
“I... I said if Lee Bronson and his wife had lied to me I was going to give them a hard time.”
“Did you say when you were going to give them this hard time?”
“I guess I said right away.”
“And then he suddenly happened to remember those two names?”
“Yes. He forgot them, he said. Then he remembered. He told me. And I checked them out and...”
“I can’t hear you, Johnny. Talk louder.”
“Then you picked me up.”
He tried to ask more questions, but Keefler had gone too far away. He did not seem to hear. When Ben shook him by the shoulder there was no resistance, no awareness. The man’s lips moved. He looked back after he left the cell. Johnny Keefler sat in a gray huddle on the bunk, good hand clasping the wrist of the mutilated left arm, his shadow made starkly black by the blue-white flare of the recessed fluorescence in the ceiling overhead.
Chapter Twelve
At eight o’clock on Friday evening, Ben Wixler sat waiting. He did not hear Beth tell him the kids were in bed until she spoke the second time. Then he stood up heavily and went in and said good night to them.
They walked back into the living room. He stood by the picture window and looked out at the rainy street under the lights. She came up beside him and touched his arm.
“Bad?” she said softly.
“It’s supposed to be good,” he said. “It’s what they pay me for. Remember me? I’m Ben Wixler, nemesis.”
“So bitter, baby.”
“It’s all so damn stupid. Three of them dead. And two dying. I didn’t tell you about that. About Catton. Wendy interrogated him. Catton was fine. Then Wendy worked his way around to the key question. What illegal thing was he doing, in partnership with Paul Verney? Wendy said Catton’s mouth worked and nothing came out and he turned the color of spoiled yeast and Wendy caught him as he toppled off the chair. He’s in an oxygen tent. He can’t talk and we won’t talk, and the medical profession is astonished he lasted until this afternoon. He may be gone by now. It stoned Wendy. But it was another confirmation.”
“You’re certain now?”
“Certain. Verney is the other dying man. He doesn’t know it yet. I don’t know why he didn’t cover himself better. He left it so open he can’t prove he wasn’t at Lee Bronson’s Tuesday night. And he even told his office staff he was out near Kemp on Wednesday morning. I think it’s a kind of intellectual arrogance with him. In his own way he may be as crazy as poor Johnny Keefler. He should have known that sooner or later we’d check him. Even if there was no talk with Keefler, we would have checked him as a matter of routine when we ran out of other answers. And he isn’t ready for it. My God, his own secretary was able to tell us he left his office with Danny Bronson Thursday morning. He withdrew one thousand and one hundred dollars in cash. The teller remembers he asked for a thousand in fifties, a hundred in twenties. He thinks he’s so damn shrewd. He’s a sitting rabbit. We’ll blow his head off before he can wiggle.”
She gave him a wry smile. “So you prefer your killers to be smarter, darling?”
He smiled back. “Even though he was clumsy, it’s a change from the ball peen hammer in the furnished room type deal.”
She winced. “Puh-leeze.”
The phone rang. He hurried to it.
“Cullin, Sergeant. It’s all set. He got in fifteen minutes ago. It’s staked out. Dan has the warrant and he’s on the way to pick you up, along with Catelli.”
Ben put on his raincoat and hat. He kissed Beth. She stood and watched through the picture window as he got into the sedan. She saw it drive away. She felt a great gladness that he was the sort of man he was, able to be depressed by the things he had to do. She hoped the years would never dull that sensitivity. She hoped he could never become callously indifferent to the human beings he trapped.
Lee Bronson arrived back at his rented house at eight-fifteen on Friday night. He had left immediately after the funeral and had driven back through the gray rain to Hancock. He felt emotionally drained. Through all their tears they had looked at him with eyes of stone. He was the betrayer who had taken their lovely child, their only child, to a faraway place and, through his negligence, had permitted her to be slain. They made no attempt to speak to him, nor did any of her childhood friends. He had stood apart from all of them.
When he watched the casket lowered into the October ground it was still unbelievable to him. He remembered how she had reveled in sunlight, how she enjoyed the hot pulse of the sun on her perfect body.
Now he was permitted to return to his home.
She had left an emptiness. When, with the permission of the police, her parents had come to this house to take away her personal belongings, the screaming scene they made had made him wish he could turn and run from them. They had stripped the house of everything that had been hers, and a few things that were not hers, such as the small radio she had given him, and one table lamp that had been in the house when they had rented it. It was not worth a protest.
He walked through the oppressive silence of the house and estimated how long it would take him to pack, how much luggage he would need. His two suitcases and a big crate for the books and papers. That should do it.
When the phone rang, startling him, he let it ring five times before he answered it. He thought it could be a diehard reporter.
“Yes?” he said cautiously.
“Lee. Haughton here. I’m wondering about Monday. Will you take your classes?”
“I... don’t know.”
“The first day will be difficult. But the little animals have short memories.”
“I had the idea I might go away for a while, Dr. Haughton.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want to let you down.”
“My dear young man, I have been disappointed in the human race my entire life. I will call your attention to two things. One — your sad showing in our chess match. Two — the mute and helpless woe that will be the lot of one Jill Grossman, a highly talented child who can use much guidance.”