Dawn was about to arrive, and with it the early morning flight from Los Angeles, so the town’s taxi drivers were up and about. A cop at the switchboard had one in front of the Commissariat within five minutes. I gave the driver instructions and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the back of the seat.
Twenty minutes later he shook me awake and we drove slowly up the private road to the Payton’s mountain home. The Renault was where I’d left it—how long ago now? I couldn’t remember. The rent-a-car people would be happy to tell me. Its starter turned over reluctantly but finally it caught and I paid off the taxi driver.
Then I walked slowly in the early morning light through the dew-laden grass. The leach pit was closed now, its grisly contents gone. I gave it a quick, furtive glace and walked on. The wreckage of the generator shed and the water tank was complete. The explosion had torn through the cement-block wall of the shed, and the legs of the tank had collapsed, tumbling the tank onto what was left of the shed. Somewhere in there a nameless gendarme had been blown to pieces. Now there was nothing more to see than a heap of twisted metal and shattered wood. Did his spirit linger somewhere in there, crying for revenge?
I stood in silence, shivering in the cool mountain air, then walked slowly back to the car.
It took me less than a minute to find the note that had lured me there, stuck in the gap between the seat cushions. I slipped it into a pocket. Had I poked it there myself? Had Schneider hidden it there? While I ponderously turned these weighty questions over in my mind I felt my eyes closing of themselves and laid my forehead for a moment on the steering wheel to help me think.
When I came to with a jerk it was 8:30 and the sun was streaming in the window. My mouth tasted like the Lippizaner Stallions had camped there for the night. I found an outside water faucet by the garage and turned it on. No water. Suddenly I remembered: no tank. I grimaced, knuckled my eyes, and staggered back to the car.
When I arrived in Punaauia forty minutes later Tamara Payton was waiting in the doorway. Her face was grim. I sighed and walked slowly toward her. I stopped six feet away and nodded somberly. Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed through clenched teeth.
“So!” she barked. “That’s the kind of friend you are. You take my money, you take my father’s money, and then…and then you put him in jail!” Her eyes flashed.
I gestured apologetically. “You don’t—”
“—understand?” she hissed, and drew nearer by a stride. Her pretty college-girl looks were distorted now by anger. “I certainly do understand. He swindled you out of your $100,000 and this is your way of getting even!”
“Tamara, that’s not—”
“Of course it’s true. Look at you, you can’t even look me in the eye!”
I could, of course, but there was no particular reason to. “I just came to get my—”
“I bet you did!” She moved closed, and I wondered if she was going to attack me. In my state, an assault by a three-legged kitten could easily be fatal. “Even a slimy no-good like you wouldn’t dare to go on living in the house of the man you’ve just put in jail!”
“Hold it,” I pleaded wearily. “He is in jail, he really is?”
“Well…” she conceded reluctantly, “Tama didn’t actually say he was in prison, he just said he was being held until some questions could be cleared up. But that’s what they said about you!” she flared. “And then look what happened—that Schneider monster tortured—”
“No one’s going to be torturing a friend of the President,” I said impatiently, although I had to admit to myself that in this particular case the idea wasn’t totally abhorrent.
Her head fell forward against my chest. “Oh, Rocky,” she said, her voice muffled, “just…just because he cheated you out of that money and…and…likes to do disgusting things with boys doesn’t mean that he killed my mother!”
“You know about—”
“Of course,” she said scornfully. “I think he’s hateful and despicable and weak and foolish, but he’s still my father, and he didn’t kill my mother and he didn’t kill those awful West people even though they deserved it and I wish he had!”
I managed a weak smile. “You really think he didn’t?”
“I just told you, dammit all! Why don’t you believe me?”
“Well, I do believe that you be—”
“You bastard! You’re just laughing at me! I tell you, he couldn’t have killed the Wests, he was with me when they were killed.”
I studied her dubiously. “He was? All the time? I thought he was on the phone, plotting his campaign back in New Mexico.”
She frowned in concentration. “It’s…so hard to remember when it’s so long ago and you didn’t have any reason to pay attention.… But I…remember…I drove him in to the airport sometime in the morning, you’d already gone to the police station, and one of the crew was there to open up the plane for him, and I went on board with him and we…talked for a while, he was trying to tell me that Mommy was going…going…to be all right, and…then somebody brought us a cup of coffee and he started to get out a lot of papers from his briefcase…and then I…I think I remembered I had to get some clothes from the cleaners so…so he said not to bother to wait for him and I got down from the plane and drove into town.… I…stayed there in town for lunch and then went home, and about four o’clock I remembered he was still on the plane, so I went back to get him.”
“And he was there?”
“Well, he was…standing in the parking lot, talking to some people, and when he saw me he said goodby to them and came over and got in the car and I drove him home.”
“Well.…” I said slowly.
“But don’t you see, that proves he couldn’t have killed—”
“Yeah, I guess so. If the police believe you, and if he can prove there was someone else there all the—”
Her eyes widened in shock as the final betrayal hit home. “But…but…you don’t believe me,” she whispered. “You don’t believe me!”
“Well…I’ve got to think about it,” I said evasively.
She pushed herself away violently, staggering me. “I hate you!” she cried, and ran back to the house.
I stood there motionless for a long time.
Finally I nodded in weary agreement.
I didn’t like myself very much either.