The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller Read online

  THE MISSING AND THE DEAD

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1982, 2014 Jack Lynch

  ISBN: 194129832X

  ISBN-13: 9781941298329

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Books by Jack Lynch

  The Dead Never Forget

  Pieces Of Death

  Wake Up And Die

  Speak For The Dead

  Truth Or Die

  Yesterday Is Dead

  Die For Me

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  For the first time in his life he had to figure out what he was going to do with a body. He didn't have much time for it, either. And it had to be very nearly foolproof if he wanted to preserve his identity and, perhaps, his wife's sanity. She had said that to him the last time they'd had to pack up and dash off, leaving no trace, assuming new roles.

  "One more time and I'll lose my mind."

  No hysterics. His wife wasn't that way. In fact, she had been the one to hold him together during the rockier times of his long career. She was firm and strong. She understated things. If she told him she was afraid of going to pieces, so be it. And it had been their last slapdash move. Into retirement for John Roper—his most recent identity—and the Hobo, the name by which he was known in certain police and prison circles. Retirement also for the reclusive painter, Pavel, who conjured portraits of his victims to curb the blinding headaches. Good-bye, all. Retirement time. Ta-ta. They traveled abroad for the better part of a year. In style and comfort. God knows he'd earned it over the years, along with enough money to do it.

  He opened the hood to his Land Rover and stood staring bleakly at the engine. His mind was on other things. Nearly thirty years. God Almighty, that was a long time to have gotten away with it all. Not a serious miscue, either. Not one mistaken victim. Never an arrest. Probably stalked at one time or another by more lawmen than in the history of crime and punishment. His wife, poor girl, who could blame her? Moving here and there and then off someplace else. The new identities. A career of role-playing, that's what it had been, long before the term had become jargon. The ever more clever and involved arrangements for solicitation and payoff, all those codes and maps, the letter drops and midnight phone calls...

  It was intricate mental work. He felt sure that was what led to the headaches. Anybody burns out after a while. An outsider, he knew, would suspect some form of guilt or remorse for his victims, but such was not the case. He and his wife used to talk those things through, long into the night. His work was no more demeaning than that of the heroic young warrior. And certainly more noble than that of the vivisectionist with his tortured animals. He never consciously hurt anybody. Something quick and sure, for the most part, a rap on the head followed by a needleful of arsenic. Quick and very nearly painless.

  And there were, he knew with utter certainty, a lot of miserable bastards out there who he'd gotten rid of. Not that he ever let such judgments influence his work. But it was a fact and he knew it, and knew as well that many of the police who pursued him would equally have clapped him on the back for having helped purge some of the world's scum.

  But back then, as the Hobo, he hadn't thought about such things. And as the name suggested, he was a moral tramp in those matters. If the price was right, if he could set it up to guarantee execution and escape, he would do it, be the victim saint or scamp. He couldn't let those things gnaw at him.

  There, of course, had been those who paid society's price for the work that the Hobo did. Among the hundreds who had hired him over the years, there had been plenty whose boasting, stupidity, drunkenness or conscience had led to their own arrest or confession. But none of them ever knew enough about the Hobo to identify or describe him, which was only fitting. The Hobo was but a smoking gun. Let the twisted or jealous or hate-filled or greedy minds that conceived the act in the first place pay the price of it.

  Pavel, a different, creative side of his nature, had emerged late in his career, after the onset of the crippling headaches. One of his victims, a young man in Oklahoma, had realized at the last moment what was about to befall him, and had exhibited a stark, terror-filled expression. It had been unsettling, to say the least. Back home, he told his wife about it. And in one of those quantum leaps the mind is capable of, she had urged him to try to capture the expression on canvas. He'd been doubtful at first. He'd never been more than a half-hearted painter at best. It was a challenging discipline and he'd seldom used it for anything else, working his mind the same way he worked his muscles, in order to meet the demands of his profession.

  But he'd tried it. He'd painted the young man's face, as best he could recall it, and the headaches had receded to little more than an annoyance.

  He had thought about that some in the years since. Wondering if somehow that portrait business was what had very nearly unraveled his identity and led to his capture in Southern California. But he couldn't think of how it might have, any more than had a dozen other facets of the aging process. His work, though, had taken a ragged turn there. He knew that, now. He should have stuck with sap and needle, rather than get into the decapitation business. It was messy and awful, and dangerous. But to curb the headaches, he'd found it was very nearly the only manner of impending death that could evoke the stark fear he could later reconstruct on canvas, and through whatever chemical workings of the brain, banish the headaches. He didn't even like to think about that late period.

  He liked to dwell more in the present. He and his wife had talked and thought about the roles they would assume in retirement. They had decided to return to California. It was a large enough place so there could be little fear of having events in one end of the state connected with those in the other. And his wife always had wanted a garden. To watch the growing cycle through the seasons. That pleased her, and they'd never been able to do that before. He, on the other hand, was able just to kick around and feel the soil and tramp the hills and read voraciously and putter at the palette, as his wife put it.

  He might have known it was too good to last. In recent days there had been a disturbing sequence of events. Call it chance or whimsy or whatever, Fate was showing him her heels. First had been that surprising showcase of the Pavel portraits in San Francisco. He'd had to take quick steps there.

  And now, there was the detective. The very man who down south years before had tripped him up, forcing his retirement. And just minutes ago he had been in the heart of town, asking his questions. He was the man who had made the connection between John Roper and the Hobo and Pavel. What in God's name could have brought him to Barracks Cove?

  No
matter. He was there, that was the thing to be addressed. Fortunately his wife had recognized him and helped steer the man out to their home. He would be arriving soon, and he would have to be killed. No question about that. That's why the Land Rover's hood was raised and he pretended to be fussing with the engine. At his side, on the fender, was a dirty rag. The detective would drive up, get out of his car and address him. He in turn would look up, turn, and take up the dirty rag to wipe his hands and to grasp the pistol concealed within it and then blow out the man's brains, just like that. No time for nonsense. Not even a hello. No, sir.

  Then there would be the body. He'd never had to conceal a body during his years in the business. But he had to this time and he had to be very good about it. His wife had told him. She couldn't move again. She just couldn't bring herself to do that again.

  He had a half-baked plan. That was his strong suit, of course, the mental work of planning these things. It had pulled him through time and again. It was the surprises he hated.

  And then, just as he heard the sound of a car's engine approaching the old road leading to their home, another, absolutely sickening thought occurred to him. He was a sitting duck, now. He still had enough confidence in his nerves and skills to kill, but this time he couldn't fade away after.

  And suppose, just suppose, there was another. Oh, God, what if there were somebody else who could make the same connections the approaching detective had? What might he look like? Who would he be? Dear God. Who?

  ONE

  I agreed to look for a young man named Jerry Lind only because I owed a couple of favors to Don Ballard, who runs the publicity department for one of the local television stations. Ballard had asked me to speak with the missing man's sister and to do what I could to help her. The sister was a station personality of the sort that made me feel radio is going to make a big comeback some day. Her name was Janet Lind. She was one of the new breed of "happy talk" deliverers of the day's events, a member of the station's Now News Team. She had developed a flair for it, along with a repertoire of about thirty posturings, and she managed to trot out each of them at least once while we chatted in a small interview room in the bowels of the station out on Van Ness Avenue.

  She was a tall woman in her late twenties wearing a trim pantsuit the color of weak red wine. She talked about her brother as if he were one of her feature stories. If she wasn't flashing a smile she was giving a wink, heaving a sigh, snapping her fingers, fluffing her hair or arching an eyebrow. It took a while to be able to ignore the nonsense and concentrate on her story. That, at least, stirred my interest.

  Her brother Jerry was twenty-six and married to a young woman his sister didn't approve of. The couple had no children. Lind lived north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, but he worked in San Francisco for Coast West Insurance Co. He had dropped out of sight nearly two weeks earlier, on a Sunday. Lind had told his wife he had some things to clear up at the office, and after that he'd probably leave on an out-of-town assignment. His wife had gone to a movie with a girlfriend and when she got home later that evening some of Lind's clothing and toilet articles were gone, so she had assumed he'd left town.

  So far as Janet Lind knew that was the last anyone had seen of her brother. Lind's wife, when she hadn't heard from him for two days, telephoned her husband's office, but nobody there knew where he might have gone. Lind's wife called Janet to see if she knew his whereabouts, then called the police and reported her husband missing. According to Miss Lind's story and my pocket calendar, Lind had dropped out of sight on a Sunday, June 8. This was Friday, June 20.

  "I kept hoping he would turn up," said Janet Lind, showing me the palm of her hand. "Now I've decided I'd better get somebody working on it."

  "How come his wife hasn't hired somebody to look for him? Or has she?"

  "She says not. In my opinion, Mr. Bragg, she is not terribly mature. She did say that in addition to the police, she spoke to Jerry's boss about it, urging him to look into the matter."

  "Have you spoken to Jerry's boss?"

  "Yes, but he wasn't too helpful. He did suggest we meet for cocktails some evening and talk about it if I wanted. I haven't wanted. His name is Stoval."

  I made a note of it. "What does your brother do for them, sell policies?"

  "I don't know."

  "Are you serious?"

  "It never came up in any of our conversations." She blinked her eyes and stared at something over my head.

  "How old is your brother's wife?"

  "Marcie? Twenty-two or -three, I think."

  "Did they seem to get along all right?"

  "I couldn't tell you. I can't stand his wife."

  "Why not?"

  "She's a cheap little sexpot."

  "That's blunt enough."

  "So I avoid her. Jerry and I meet for lunch once or twice each month. He never indicated that anything was wrong between them. We seldom spoke about her."

  "What did you speak about?"

  "My work, mostly. Jerry found it nearly as fascinating as I do."

  "Did he seem to like his own job, whatever it was?"

  "He seemed content."

  "What did he do before he worked for Coast West?"

  "He was in the Army. Before that he was going to school in Santa Barbara. That's where he met Marcie."

  "At school?"

  "Hardly. She's more the sort you would meet at juvenile hall."

  "Then it could be possible your brother is missing on purpose. And if he is, he could be hard to find."

  "I don't believe he's missing on purpose, Mr. Bragg. He might drop out of the lives of other people, but not mine."

  "That sounds as if you haven't told me everything."

  "It's nothing mysterious. Jerry and I have been orphans since we were very young. Our parents died in an automobile accident. After that we were raised by our father's brother and his wife. Uncle Milton had land holdings in Southern California. Aunt Grace died five years ago. Poor Uncle Milton had a stroke and died last week. They had no children of their own. The estate is valued at well over one million dollars."

  "And you and your brother are the beneficiaries?"

  "For the most part, yes. That's why..."

  She dropped her stagy shenanigans for a change and leaned forward. "Please don't get me wrong, Mr. Bragg. I hope that nothing has happened to my brother. I love him as much as any sister could love her brother. We were through some pretty grim times, emotionally, right after our parents died. We didn't accept our aunt and uncle at the start. For a time we had only each other to cling to.

  "However," she continued, sitting straighter, "if the very worst should have happened—if Jerry is dead, I would want to know if he died before or after our Uncle Milton died."

  "If your brother died first, you get the whole million dollars plus."

  "Yes."

  "But if he died after your uncle did, half of the estate would go to Jerry, and in the event of his subsequent death, to his wife, who you can't stand."

  "Now you know all there is to know, Mr. Bragg. Jerry is as aware of the estate as I. Uncle Milton was eighty-seven. He was an old and feeble man. Jerry and I—we discussed it the last time we had lunch together. Neither of us expected him to live out the year. So while Jerry might disappear from his wife..."

  "You have a convincing argument, Miss Lind. When did your uncle die?"

  "Monday morning, the ninth."

  "Just a day after your brother disappeared."

  "Yes."

  "When was the last time you spoke to Jerry?"

  "We chatted on the phone about the middle of the week before he disappeared."

  "Did he seem in normal spirits?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "I had phoned to tell him about an exhibit of new paintings at the Legion Palace Museum. They were modern works, quite unusual for the most part. I had helped do a feature report on them for the news shot. Jerry is a weekend painter himself. I urged him to se
e the exhibit."

  "Does your brother have many close friends in the area?"

  "Not that I'm aware of. He mentioned people at work occasionally, but nobody outside of that."

  "Is he a gambler?"

  "I doubt it, Mr. Bragg. He's a cautious man with a dollar."

  "Does he drink much, snort coke or things of that nature?"

  "He drinks a little. That's all I know about."

  "Did he run around with a lot of girls before he got married?"

  "I really don't know," she said with the first blank expression of the day. "I was away at school by the time he would have been doing that sort of thing."

  "Okay, Miss Lind. Give me your brother's address and I'll get started on it."

  "You're going to see his wife?"

  "Of course. What's wrong with that?"

  "I just don't want to pay for any time you might spend—making friends with her."

  "Don't worry about it. Why, do you figure she might cheat on your brother?"

  "I believe she might do anything. Even murder."

  It wasn't the best interview I'd ever conducted, but I doubted if there was much else she could have told me about her brother. Up to now Janet Lind had been mostly interested in her own career, not her brother's. Now it was Uncle Milton's money at the head of the parade. I couldn't blame her for it. It just made my job a little tougher, but she would pay for that.

  After she wrote me out a check and gave me the unlisted telephone number at her apartment in a highrise building overlooking the Golden Gate, I went upstairs to a public telephone booth in the station lobby. My first call was to the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street. I knew several San Francisco police officers on a nodding basis, but only a couple of them well enough to ask favors of. One was John Foley, an inspector on the homicide detail. It was the romantic branch of the force, but not one especially helpful to most of the jobs I had. On the other hand, the police don't maintain an information bureau for private cops, and a friend is a friend. Foley was in, listened to my story and said he'd check it out with Missing Persons when he had the time.