Part 2 (1/2)
The big deputy sighed and belched. Hyzer opened his pocket notebook. ”First interrogation of Travis McGee. Fourteen-forty hours. April 24. Pritchard monitoring tape. Sturnevan witnessing interrogation. Now then. From whom did you hear that Frank Baither had been, or was about to be, released from Raiford State Prison, and, to the best of your recollection, tell me the date on which you received this information?”
”The only previous time in my life I ever heard the name Frank Baither was when you said that name this morning in front of Al's service station, Hyzer.”
”Was there a third man with you last night?”
”You're playing your game, Hyzer. The officer of the law. The professional. If you were a professional instead of a swamp county ham actor, you'd find out who we are, where we were yesterday, and where we were heading. You'd verify the girl running across the road. You'd make a couple of phone calls. Not you. No, sir. Don't confuse yourself with logic. Net result is you aren't going to play sheriff much longer.”
”An unidentified woman ran across the road. We found the place where she crouched in the ditch. Bare footprints in the mud. A place where she braced herself, making an imprint of the knuckles of her right hand. We used the skid marks to locate the area. Sooner or later we'll locate her body.”
”She's dead?”
”She almost got across, but you swerved and probably hit her.”
”Now why did I do that, Sheriff?”
”Because she was with Baither and saw you and got away from you and you people had to hunt her down.”
”With an old Rolls, for G.o.d's sake?”
”And you lost control when a tire blew.”
”Hyzer, you are having dreams and visions and fantasies. I will tell you who to phone at Lake Pa.s.skokee. I will pay for the call. He is an old friend. We went to the wedding of his eldest daughter. He has a fish camp. We went ba.s.s fis.h.i.+ng. There were rods in that car of mine. And three fresh-cleaned ba.s.s on ice.”
”Deputy Billy Cable says they were fresh enough.”
”Will you phone?”
”This is a small county, McGee. And I am in a small job at small pay. But I am not a fool. Four years ago you people, along with Frank Baither, planned that job down to the last small detail. And there was just as much at stake now as then. More, because this time you had to kill one you knew of, and one you didn't. First things first. When the time comes to dismantle your alibi, it will fall apart. You know it and I know it. Please stop making speeches. Answer my questions. Was there a third man with you last night?”
”Meyer and I were alone.”
”Did Meyer finish him off with the ice pick or did you?”
”Hyzer, the car went into the ditch, and we got out of it by great good fortune, and we walked all the way down to the Tamiami Trail to that station where you found us.”
”That is most unlikely, McGee. We had an anonymous call at one in the morning. A man, whispering to disguise his voice. He said Frank Baither phoned him every night at midnight, and if some night there was no call, and no one answered at the Baither place, he was to call the law. He went out there and found Baither still taped to that chair. From that time on I had cars on the road all night. You would have been stopped and questioned.”
”There is very d.a.m.ned little traffic on that Route 112 after dark. And when we saw lights coming, we got out of sight.”
”Now why would you do that?” He smiled for the first time. I think it was a smile. The corners of his mouth went up about a sixteenth of an inch.
So I told him about the nut in the old truck who'd tried to pot us from the truck window, and thought he'd gotten one of us, thought he'd scragged somebody named Hutch, then tried to d.i.c.ker with the survivor, somebody named Orville. I said it happened about one hour and four miles south of where I had put Miss Agnes into the ca.n.a.l.
”Describe the truck.”
”An old Ford pickup, rough, noisy, and beat. I think it was red. A junker. Not worth licensing.”
He slowly turned the pages of his pocket notebook. ”So, being the innocent law-abiding citizens you people claim to be, you made no attempt to report somebody trying to kill you, either at the time or this morning to either Officer Nagle or to me.”
”Sheriff, neither of us saw the man. The plate was too dirty and the light too weak to read the number. You know your own county better than I do. There are probably a lot of fine citizens living back in the boonies off that road. And there are some very rough ones too, native-born swamp rats and poachers, and people that came a long way to find a place where they're not likely to be found. A long time ago I spent one weekend here in Cypress City, and after I saw how Sat.u.r.day night was shaping up, I went back to the motel room and put my cash money in the Gideon and went back out with one ten-dollar bill and had what you could call a memorable evening. I don't really much care if your people kill each other, Hyzer. We were just making certain they didn't kill us and then feel apologetic because the dead bodies didn't turn out to be Hutch and Orville. There wasn't any phone booth handy after that clown drove off in his junk truck. I thought of a way I could attract official attention. We could have walked back four miles and I could have dived down and gotten my tow chain out of the tool compartment and heaved it up over the power lines. Then pretcy soon we would have had the use of the CB radio in the Florida Power and Light truck that would show up. I thought of it, and I thought of making a neighborly call at the next house we came to. But I didn't like either of those ideas, Sheriff.”
”McGee, you had bad luck, didn't you? When you lost that car in the ca.n.a.l, you went back to Frank Baither's place and tried to use his old Ford truck, but the battery was too far gone and you couldn't get it started: Then, while you were walking, you did some thinking. Somebody was going to spot that car sooner or later, and it could be traced to you, and that was a risk you couldn't accept. So you had to put something together that sounded good, and get Al Storey to hoist it out of the ca.n.a.l and tow it in.”
”Hyzer, you are one dumb, blind, stubborn man.”
”You have a good act, McGee. So does your partner. Aren't you wondering, a little, why you can't sell it to me?”
”More than a little.”
”Then there must be a little more bad luck along with what you already know about. Bad luck or judgment. What could you have forgotten? Think about it.”
I thought. ”You must have something you like. I don't know what it could be. I will tell you one thing. Don't depend on it. Because whatever it is, it isn't going to prove what you think it proves, no matter how good it looks.”
”You never saw or heard of Frank Baither in your life?”
”No.”
”You were never inside his house?”
”Never.”
”I am going to describe an exhibit to you. It will be a part of the file I am going to turn over to the State's attorney. It is an empty envelope addressed to you, at Bahia Mar, date-stamped a week ago, April 17. On the back of it, possibly in your hand, are some notes about highway numbers and street names. It had been folded twice, and had been immersed in water. Do you recognize it from the description?”
”I think so. Yes. I don't know where you're going with it, though. Jimmy Ames phoned me last Sat.u.r.day and invited us to Betsy's wedding. He said that the road I'd normally take was closed, that a bridge was out. He gave me directions. I reached down into the wastebasket near the phone and took an envelope out and wrote down the directions. Get hold of him at Jimmy's Fish Camp. He'll verify it.”
”When the call came in about the Baither murder, Deputy Cable phoned me at my home. I got dressed and drove to the Baither place. I supervised the investigation. After the county medical examiner had authorized the removal of the body I posted Deputy Arnstead there to make certain n.o.body entered the premises before a more thorough daylight search could be made. I was on my way to partic.i.p.ate in that search when the call came from Officer Nagle. After he described you and told me about where your car was, and said you had walked all the way to the Trail, I had no choice but to bring you in for questioning. I returned at eleven-fifteen to the Baither place and, with Deputy Arnstead, completed the search of the house and the area. The envelope was found on the floor of the room where Baither died.”
So what do you do? The big soft sleepy deputy s.h.i.+fted in his chair, creaking it. One thing you do is stop thras.h.i.+ng and flapping. You back up a couple of steps, tuck the elbows in, get the jaw out of range.
”Question?” I asked.
”Can you change your mind about your rights? Yes. At any time.”
”That wasn't what I was going to ask.”
”What then?”
”I can tell you exactly what I did with that envelope, where, and when. But I don't know you, Hyzer. It's planted evidence. You had somebody dance Meyer around. I don't like the way you think. I don't like the way you do your job. If I don't want to answer any more questions, and if you have nothing to do with the plant, then you are going to be that much more convinced you've got the right people to make your case. But if I tell you about the envelope, and you are in on building the case against us any way you can, then you can listen to the truth and go plug the holes in your evidence. I don't even know if this is going onto tape and, if it is, whether you erase the ones you don't like. I'm boxed because I can't figure out what you are, so I don't know which way to go. You talk about some action four years ago, something we are supposed to have planned with this Baither. Check us out. There's no record of any convictions.”
”Which means only that up until now you haven't made any serious mistakes, McGee.”
”So why, Sheriff, would I go to all the trouble of faking up this wedding story and having the fis.h.i.+ng gear and the ba.s.s in the car, just to come sneaking into your county after dark to knock off a recent graduate of Raiford? Where's the sense to it?”
”About nine hundred thousand dollars worth of sense, which you are quite aware of. And the chance you might have to go through a roadblock on your way out of the area with it. Misdirection, McGee. A car so conspicuous no fool would use it for this kind of purpose. Fresh ba.s.s packed in ice. It should have worked, McGee.”
So another shaft of light in the murk. That much money is worth a lot of care and attention. And it could maybe buy a matched set of Hyzers.
”I think I'd better stop right now, Sheriff. I'd like to phone an attorney.”
”A particular attorney?”