In its shallow depth a man’s body lay curled like a foetus, face upturned. I recognized his peppermint-striped shirt, glad rags to be buried in. And in spite of the dirt that stuffed his open mouth and clung to his eyes, I recognized Stanley Broadhurst, and I said so.
The big man absorbed the information quietly. “What was he doing here, do you know?”
“No. I don’t. But I believe this is part of his family’s ranch. You haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”
“I’m with the Forest Service. My name’s Joe Kelsey, I’m trying to find out what started this fire. And,” he added deliberately, “I think I have found out. It seems to have flared up in this immediate area. I came across this, right there.” He indicated a yellow plastic marker stuck in the burned-over ground a few feet from where we were standing. Then he produced a small aluminum evidence case and snapped it open. It contained a single half-burned cigarillo.
“Did Broadhurst smoke these?”
“I saw him smoke one this morning. You’ll probably find the package in his clothes.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to move him until the coroner sees him. It looks as if I may have to, though.”
He squinted uphill toward the fire. It blazed like a displaced sunset through the trees. The black silhouettes of men fighting it looked small and futile in spite of their tanker trucks and bulldozers. Off to the left the fire had spilled over the ridge and was pouring downhill like fuming acid eating the dry brush. Its smoke blew ahead of it and spread across the city toward the sea.
Kelsey took the spade and started to throw dirt into the hole, talking as he worked.
“I hate to bury a man twice, but it’s better than letting him get roasted. The fire’s coming back this way.”
“Was he buried when you found him?”
“That’s correct. But whoever buried him didn’t do much of a job of covering up. I found the spade and the pick with the blood on it – and then the filled hole with loose dirt around. So I started digging. I didn’t know what I was going to find. But I sort of had a feeling that it would be a dead man with a hole in his head.”
Kelsey worked rapidly. The dirt covered Stanley’s striped shirt and his upturned insulted face. Kelsey spoke to me over his shoulder:
“You mentioned that you were looking for several people. Who are the others?”
“The dead man’s little boy is one. And there was a blond girl with him.”
“So I’ve heard. Can you describe her?”
“Blue eyes, five foot six, 115 pounds, age about eighteen. Broadhurst’s widow can tell you more about her. She’s at the ranchhouse.”
“Where’s your car? I came out on a fire truck.”
I told him that Stanley’s mother had brought me in her pickup, and that she was in the cabin. Kelsey stopped spading dirt. His face was running with sweat, and mildly puzzled.
“What’s she doing in there?”
“Resting.”
“We’re going to have to interrupt her rest.”
Beyond the grove, in the unburned brush, the fire had grown almost as tall as the trees. The air moved in spurts and felt like hot animal breath.
We ran away from it, with Kelsey carrying the spade and me carrying the bloody pick. The pick felt heavy by the time we reached the door of the cabin. I set it down and knocked on the door before I went in.
Mrs. Broadhurst sat up with a start. Her face was rosy. Sleep clung to her eyes and furred her voice:
“I must have dozed off, forgive me, but I had the sweetest dream. I spent – we spent our honeymoon here, you know, right in this cabin. It was during the war, quite early in the war, and traveling wasn’t possible. I dreamed that I was on my honeymoon, and none of the bad things had happened.”
Her half-dreaming eyes focused on my face and recognized the signs, which I couldn’t conceal, of another bad thing that had happened. Then she saw Kelsey with the spade in his hands. He looked like a giant gravedigger blocking the light in the doorway.
Mrs. Broadhurst’s normal expression, competent and cool and rather strained, forced itself down over her open face. She got up very quickly, and almost lost her balance.
“Mr. Kelsey? It’s Mr. Kelsey, isn’t it? What’s happened?”
“We found your son, ma’am.”
“Where is he? I want to talk to him.”
Kelsey said in deep embarrassment: “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, ma’am.”
“Why? Has he gone somewhere?”
Kelsey gave me an appealing look. Mrs. Broadhurst walked toward him.
“What are you doing with that spade? That’s my spade, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”
She took it out of his hands. “It most certainly is. I bought it for my own use last spring. Where did you get hold of it, from my gardener?”
“I found it in the clump of trees yonder.” Kelsey gestured in that direction.
“What on earth was it doing there?”
Kelsey’s mouth opened and shut. He was unwilling or afraid to tell her that Stanley was dead. I moved toward her and told her that her son had been killed, probably with a pickax.
I stepped outside and showed her the pickax. “Is this yours, too?”
She looked at it dully. “Yes, I believe it is.”
Her voice was a low monotone, hardly more than a whisper. She turned and began to run toward the burning trees, stumbling in her high-heeled riding boots. Kelsey ran after her, heavily and rapidly like a bear. He took her around the waist and lifted her off her feet and turned her around away from the fire.
She kicked and shouted: “Let me go. I want my son.”
“He’s in a hole in the ground, ma’am. You can’t go in there now, nobody can. But his body won’t burn, it’s safe underground.”
She twisted in his arms and struck at his face. He dropped her. She fell in the brown weeds, beating at the ground and crying that she wanted her son.
I got down on my knees beside her and talked her into getting up and coming with us. We went down the trail in single file, with Kelsey leading the way and Mrs. Broadhurst between us. I stayed close behind her, in case she tried to do something wild like throwing herself down the side of the bluff. She moved passively with her head down, like a prisoner between guards.
chapter 7
Kelsey carried the spade in one hand and the bloody pickax in the other. He tossed them into the back of the truck and helped Mrs. Broadhurst into the cab. I took the wheel.
She rode between us in silence, looking straight ahead along the stony road. She didn’t utter a sound until we turned at her mailbox into the avocado grove. Then she let out a gasp which sounded as if she’d been holding her breath all the way down the canyon.
“Where is my grandson?”
“We don’t know,” Kelsey said.
“You mean that he’s dead, too. Is that what you mean?”
Kelsey took refuge in a southwestern drawl which helped to soften his answer. “I mean that nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him, ma’am.”
“What about the blond girl? Where is she?”
“I only wish I knew.”
“Did she kill my son?”
“It looks like it, ma’am. It looks like she hit him over the head with that pickax.”
“And buried him?”
“He was buried when I found him.”
“How could a girl do that?”
“It was a shallow grave, ma’am. Girls can do about anything boys can do when they set their minds to it.”
A whine had entered Kelsey’s drawl under the pressure of her questioning and the greater pressure of her fear. Impatiently she turned to me:
“Mr. Archer, is my grandson Ronny dead?”
“No.” I said it with some force, to beat back the possibility that he was.